MY WORK ... MY PASSION

• Certified Transpersonal Hypnotherapist ; Past experiences: Dream Analysis /10 Years Experience •Psychotherapist / Use of Gestalt, Jungian, Zen, Reality and Energy Therapies /10 Years Experience •EMDR • Men and Their Journey: the neuroscience of the male brain, and the implications in sexuality, education and relationship • Women: Their Transformation and Empowerment ATOD (Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs) / 21 years experience •Ordained Interfaith Minister & Official Celebrant • Social Justice Advocate • Child and Human Rights Advocate • Spiritual Guide and Intuitive • Certified Reiki Practitioner • Mediation / Conflict Resolution • “Intentional Love” Parenting Strategy Groups • Parenting Workshops • Coaching for parents of Indigo, Crystal, and Rainbow Children • International Training: Israel & England • Critical Incident Stress Debriefing • Post-911 and Post-Katrina volunteer

MSW - UNC Chapel Hill

BSW - UNC Greensboro


With immense love I wish Happy Birthday to my three grandchildren!

May 22: Brannock

May 30: Brinkley

June 12: Brogan

All three have birthdays in the same 22 days of the year ....what a busy time for the family!

"An Unending Love"

This blog and video is devoted and dedicated to my precious daughter Jennifer, my grand daughters Brogan and Brinkley, and my grand son Brannock. They are hearts of my heart. Our connection through many lives..... is utterly infinite.




The Definition of Genius

"THRIVE"

https://youtu.be/Lr-RoQ24lLg

"ONLY LOVE PREVAILS" ...."I've loved you for a thousand years; I'll love you for a thousand more....."


As we are in the winter of our lives, I dedicate this to Andrew, Dr. John J.C. Jr. and Gary W., MD, (who has gone on before us). My love and admiration is unfathomable for each of you..........and what you have brought into this world.....so profoundly to me.
The metaphors are rich and provocative; we're in them now. This world is indeed disappearing, and the richest eternal world awaits us!
The intensity, as was in each of the three of us, is in yellow!
In my heart forever.........

Slowly the truth is loading
I'm weighted down with love
Snow lying deep and even
Strung out and dreaming of
Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world

We're threading hope like fire

Down through the desperate blood
Down through the trailing wire
Into the leafless wood

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This disappearing world


I'll be sticking right there with it
I'll be by y
our side
Sailing like a silver bullet
Hit 'em 'tween the eyes
Through the smoke and rising water
Cross the great divide
Baby till it all feels right

Night falling on the city
Sparkling red and gold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This
disappearing world
This disappearing world
This disappearing world


TECHNOLOGY..........

In “Conversations with God”, by Neale Donald Walsch, there is a warning I think of. I refer to it as the Atlantis passage, and I've quoted it a few times before." As I have said, this isn't the first time your civilization has been at this brink,"

God tells Walsch. "I want to repeat this, because it is vital that you hear this. Once before on your planet, the technology you developed was far greater than your ability to use it responsibly. You are approaching the same point in human history again. It is vitally important that you understand this. Your present technology is threatening to outstrip your ability to use it wisely. Your society is on the verge of becoming a product of your technology rather than your technology being a product of your society. When a society becomes a product of its own technology, it destroys itself."

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Teenagers: God’s Answer to Psychological Oppression By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

Posted on  by Jean

August 2, 2011




1987 Intifada by France24
(this is the first of two articles on the role of adolescents in mass uprisings)
Much has been made of the role of youth in sparking the so-called “Arab Spring” revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. The historical significance of the mass insurrections in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Syria is yet to be determined — given their failure to bring about genuine political reform. Even Egypt, which received the most media attention, remains under the firm control of the Egyptian military, which has banned strikes and continues to shoot, arrest and torture protestors.
Nevertheless, the willingness of Arab citizens to engage in public protest against some of the most oppressive regimes in the world is a new and significant phenomenon. It highlights the distinction between political and psychological oppression. Psychological repression is a state of wholesale resignation. A population makes no attempt to resist, owing to their belief they will be utterly crushed. Although the Arab populations in the Middle East and North Africa remain politically oppressed, they have made giant strides in overcoming their psychological oppression.
The Role of Youth in Sparking Revolutions
Youth are nearly always the engine behind any movement to throw off psychological oppression. Marxist psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich relates this to the absence of “biological rigidity” that sets in as people age. Older people have an overwhelming drive for “business as usual,” which Austrian-born child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim credits for the failure of European Jews to resist the Nazi campaign to enslave and exterminate them (seehttp://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2011/04/27/pacifism-as-pathology-book-review). Based on my own clinical experience, I would pin it more on the illusion of immortality in children and adolescents — their inability to grasp the finality of death. It’s an inability to fully comprehend this concept that leads to adolescents’ reckless disregard for personal safety in their driving, gang banging and other risk taking activities.
The population demographics of the Arab world have special significance in this respect. At present, North Africa and Egypt currently have the highest proportion of young people in the world. Sixty-one percent of the Egyptian population is under 25 (in the US 35% are under 25). This relates mainly to Egypt’s low life expectancy (70.3 years, in contrast to 78.7 years in the US) and low numbers in the upper age brackets. Moreover the high rate of unemployment among Egyptians under 25 (25% overall and 30% among collage grads) is credited for an extremely high level of anger and frustration among Egyptian young people.
Lessons from History: Soweto and the Intifada
I have always been fascinated by two other major political movements initiated by teenagers — the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa and the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987. Both were influenced by circumstances I consider even more important than demographics or high youth unemployment. The factor characterizing both the Soweto uprising and the first Intifada is the widespread breakdown of parental authority, which is quite common during periods of social upheaval. This, in turn, leads to precocious development of personal autonomy in teenagers.
I believe both the Soweto uprising and the first Intifada have important implications for political change in the US, given present trends in American families. Over the past two decades, declining earning power has forced most parents (men and women) to work extremely long hours, leaving them have little time or energy for their kids. In many families teenagers are essentially raising themselves — which has very important implications for generation Z activism.
Lessons from Soweto
The 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa is widely credited as heralding the start of mass popular resistance to apartheid. While various scholars dispute its significance relative to other resistance activities, the courage and resolve of black teenagers played a pivotal role in inspiring a critical mass of black adults to throw off their psychological oppression and actively resist the brutal apartheid regime. The uprising has always interested me owing to the social conditions — namely a breakdown in family structure in the black townships — that made it possible. Marxist psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich wasn’t the first — or the last — to study the conservatizing influence of the traditional family, especially in authoritarian societies. The breakdown of that influence is often linked to revolutionary political change.
The students involved in the initial Soweto and Alexandria uprisings were, in essence, a generation that raised themselves. Owing to the strict pass laws implemented in the 1950s, many black residents were forced to give up to their homes and property in South African cities and move to black-only townships or Bantustans, where there was no work. The only work open to black men was in remote work camps associated with the gold and diamond mines. While Soweto women worked as domestics and nannies for white families in Johannesburg and only returned to their own children on their days off.
In 1976 Soweto teenagers had a lot in common with homeless teens, third world street children and “young carers” (children who care for parents with physical or mental disabilities or drug and alcohol problems). Forced to look after themselves from an early age, it’s typical for these teenagers to mature emotionally at a very early age.
Conditions that Politicized Bantu Schools
The event the triggered the June 16, 1976 Soweto uprising was a decree requiring that all Bantu schools teach their subjects in Afrikaans (the language of the original Dutch settlers of South Africa), rather than English. Unlike their parents, students in Soweto and the other townships were already highly politicized, owing to the atrocious conditions in the Bantu schools. While education in which schools was free, black parents were charged 51 rand a year (a half month’s salary) The Bantu schools were also incredibly overcrowded, with sixty or more students per class and teachers who often had no education qualifications.
In 1968, students in the black townships formed the African Students Movement to address these atrocious conditions. In 1972, they affiliated with the South African Students Organization (which arose out of the Black Consciousness movement at black universities).
The prelude to the June 16 uprising was a classroom boycott in early June of seventh and eight graders at Orlando West Primary School. Seven other Soweto schools immediately joined the boycott. Students at Naledi High School demanded to speak to the regional director of education. Instead the government sent out the Police Special Branch, who were forced to lock themselves in the principal’s office while the students rioted and overturned their cars.
On Sunday June 13th, 400 students met in Orland (hard to imagine without cellphones Facebook or Twitter) to call for a mass boycott and demonstration June 16th. They also made a pact not to inform their parents, who they believed would try to stop them.
On June 16, fifteen to twenty thousand students age 10-20 in school uniform met at Orlando West Secondary school to march to the stadium. The police formed a line in front of them. When the students refused to disperse, even after the police fired tear gas and set dogs on them, the police opened fire, killing several students. The other students went wild, throwing rocks and bottles at the police and setting fire to all symbols of apartheid — government buildings, liquor stores, beer halls and trucks, buses and cars belonging to white businesses.
Where Deadly Police Force Fails
The next morning rioting spread to Alexandria township. After three days, the South African government shut down the Soweto and Alexandria schools, as rioting spread to other townships and to Pretoria, Durban and Capetown with “colored” (mixed race) and Indian students also joining the rebellion. The police were totally unable to quell the rioters, even with force, owing to the students’ greater numbers and their total disregard for their own safety. When rioting was suppressed in one area, it flared up in another. It took sixteen months for the student riots to die down, in October 1977.
The Soweto riots heralded in the start of mass popular resistance to apartheid. Prior to 1976, resistance was limited to sporadic acts of sabotage by the African National Congress (the ANC had operated along strictly non-violent principles prior to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre).
The Aftermath
The Soweto uprising won major concessions from the South African government: Bantu school principles were allowed to choose the language of instruction; Pretoria opened more schools and teacher training colleges in the townships; urban black were given permanent status as city dwellers; and the law was repealed that banned blacks from owning business in the townships.
Despite these concessions, thousands of students who participated in the riots left school and went into exile in neighboring countries, where they obtained military training. They eventually filtered back into South Africa to working for the African National Congress committing acts of sabotage.
Teenagers in the First Intifada
Like the 1976 Soweto uprising, the teenagers who sparked the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987 were influenced by a similar breakdown in parental authority, though for different reasons. From 1967, when Israel first seized the Gaza strip from Egypt, until the 1987 Intifada, Gaza, which has always been much poorer than the West Bank, was little more than a cluster of refugee camps. This meant there was no central authority, other than the soldiers from the Israel Defense Force (IDF), who maintained order. According to a recent study by EuroMed Youth  (http://www.euromedyouth.net/IMG/pdf/07-EuroMedJeunesse-Etude_PALESTINE.pdf), the lack of central authority laid the groundwork for the breakdown of parental authority. Because civil society broke down following Gaza’s separation from Egypt, it was up to young people, who freely intermingled in schools, universities and the streets to create the social/political arena in which intellectual debate could occur. In 1987, Yasar Arafat and the other Palestinian resistance leaders in the PLO — who would later assume this role — were still in exile.
Children Supporting Their Families
Other factors contributed to the strong sense of autonomy Palestinian teenagers felt from their families. Witnessing the routine humiliation of their parents by Israeli soldiers was a major factor in undermining their authority. Although some Palestinians were allowed to cross into Israel to work, their wages were extremely low. Many families depended on the income of children and teenagers, working as street vendors. In some cases young people were the sole source of income.
Demographic factors also played a major role in the empowerment of Palestinian youth in the late eighties. Approximately 65% of Palestinians were under 25 (due to low life expectancy, older age groups are underrepresented). In 1987, this group had a 37% unemployment rate.
Children take on the Israel Defense ForceThe first Palestinian Intifada started spontaneously when Palestinian children, teenagers and college students rioted in response to the killing of six Palestinian students by the IDF. Initially Palestinian youth battled Israeli solders armed only with rocks, bottles and slingshots. The movement quickly spread to the West Bank and was joined by underground Palestinian resistance organizations, such as Fatah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, who taught the youths how to make Molotov cocktails and sophisticated tactics, such as burning tires or constructing barricades to protect themselves from retaliation.
The response by the IDF was massive brutality, with random killings, arbitrary detention and torture of Palestinian children and teenagers. By 1989 13,000 Palestinian teenagers were in Israeli jails.
Israel Forced to Establish the Palestinian Authority
The first Intifada didn’t end until 1993, when under the Oslo agreement, Israel agreed to establish the Palestinian Authority, and Yasar Arafat and other PLO members returned from exile to run it.
Author’s Bio: I am a 63 year old American child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. I have just published a young adult novel THE BATTLE FOR TOMORROW about a 16 year old girl who participates in the blockade and occupation of the US Capitol. In 2010 I published a memoir, THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE describing the circumstances that led me to leave the US 8 1/2 years ago to start a new life in the South Pacific. I blog at www.stuartbramhall.com

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Conscious Relationships: Stop Abusing Your Partner with Negativity

Conscious Relationships: Stop Abusing Your Partner with Negativity

Daily Kos: POTUS Has Our Backs!!! from Steve Beckow

Daily Kos: POTUS Has Our Back

Kat: I’ve noticed recently a trickle  of support from unlikely places forming beneath the din of opposition against the President. The Daily Kos has not been known for their support of President Obama and they’re part of a growing tide, from what I observe, acknowledging the outstanding tactical skills of this president.

POTUS Has Our Back

airforceblue, Daily Kos, July 31, 2011
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/31/1001258/-POTUS-Has-Our-Back
Many of you are rushing too quickly to judgment on the deal that appears to be coming together between GOP congressional leadership and the White House. President Obama actually got us a very strong deal (especially under the circumstances) and it will serve the country, and his re-election campaign well, even if he has to take some political flack in the short term.
The vast majority of Kossaks believe that the President “caved”. It appears that people feel the main cave is that there isn’t revenue raises in the bill. But keep in mind the one thing the tea party wanted–a default. For them, this was not a hostage negotiation, they wanted to kill the hostage. In this they failed–totally. And in fact if you read between the lines, I think you’ll see that this deal is far more advantageous to us in the longer game for other reasons. I’ll explain why below the fold.
To begin with, let’s go over exactly what is in the deal.
1. $2.4 trillion in cuts up front; mainly from reduced spending on the wars and decreased interest on the debt, the so-called “accounting gimmicks” the GOP hates so much.
2. A 12 member bi-partisan fiscal commission to determine another $1.5 trillion (approximately) of cuts.
3. Self executing extension of the debt ceiling through the end of 2012.
4. Triggers; automatic cuts, 50% to defense, 50% to other domestic programs including to medicare providers as a fraction of that pie, but Social Security is exempted totally.
5. House GOP gets another crack at a balanced budget amendment. (Good luck).
You can see full details about the deal, from a Republican perspective, from the Speaker’s slides, which are available here:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/…
Now, what do Obama, and you, gain from this:
First and foremost, you gain a long-term debt ceiling extension.  For fiscal stability, our credit rating, and economic growth in the future, this had to happen, and it had to be in a bi-partisan way.  I know many of you cowboys on Daily Kos wanted POTUS to go the constitutional route; I did too. But it’s a bad idea because it would merely be trading a constitutional crisis from an economic crisis and, most critically, would not restore investors confidence in U.S. credit.  This is a far better outcome.
Second, Obama was able to define the terms of the debate going forward. While he may not have been able to convince a majority of Republicans in congress that taxes have to be raised, he won in the court of public opinion.  Americans get that we need to raise taxes, particularly on the wealthy and big business, in a way they never have before, and a majority favor it (including even a few Republicans). Imagine you are Obama’s eventual opponent in the Presidential.  You have to take a position on the commission’s findings and the nation’s choices going forward.  You probably have to continue advocating for tax cuts and budget cuts.  Meanwhile, Obama and the Democrats still have their social program talking points, because Obama did not meaningfully concede on those programs.  The majority of Americans have made clear that they prefer the latter approach. It’s a good position for a Democratic candidate to be in.
Third, the GOP has been shown up for what it is, an extremist party out of step with the majority of Americans.  We all benefit from the comparison.
Fourth, this plan does contain revenue enhancements, just by another name.  Here’s why:
(a) the commission will realistically have to consider them, if it is going to have any credibility and reach a result that can pass both houses of Congress;
(b) the sequestration is itself a revenue enhancement.  As a former military member, I can tell you from personal experience that the military industrial complex, from the bombers made by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to the Burger Kings on and around the bases is huge.  It is as much an “entitlement” program for those associated with the military as Social Security and Medicare are to everyone else. If these cuts occur, a major GOP constituency will be in a world of hurt, but the funds will be freed up for other programs. Same with the Medicare cuts.  Notice that they are cuts to providers, not beneficiaries. I know many people think this is not a meaningful difference, but it is, because Medicare is the providers’ bread and butter, and there is a limit to the degree to which they can pass those savings along.  Again, it’s revenue that is mostly fattening up an industry, and cutting it means it can be used elsewhere more efficiently and;
(c) the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are themselves revenue enhancements, Obama gets the final vote on whether this occurs.  It’s not in the deal.
If you go to Redstate, you will see that they do not like this deal any more than you do, and for all of the reasons outlined above.  They feel as though they have lost, and they are right.  They wanted to instigate a default, and they did not do that. They wanted to cut Social Security, and they did not do that, they wanted another opportunity to fight this battle, and they did not get that. What they did get is that major GOP constituencies (defense and corporate health providers) have been put in jeopardy of major cuts, and from our perspective this is a good thing.  What they also got is a damocles hanging over their head in the form of the soon to expire Bush tax cuts, which Obama can blackmail them with just as they did all of us with the debt ceiling.

Why the Deficit Deal May Pass -- But Can't Stand

By Carl Pope

Chairman, Sierra Club

Posted: 8/1/11 10:00 PM ET

So we won't default -- unless the extremist Tea Party gets its way. But we don't have a long-range fiscal plan, either, whatever the press releases say. Since the plan on the table is horrendous, that's a good thing. Indeed, the idea of detailed ten-year fiscal plan was, at its heart, absurd. (Ten years ago, the U.S. government was beginning to agonize about a burgeoning budget surplus.)
Here's why the fiscal pathway laid out in the "Deficit Compromise" is not going to happen, regardless of what Congress does this week:
1. The current agreement cuts only Defense and government services/ infrastructure investments. But those two components eachaccount for only 20 percent of the total federal budget -- $700 billion each. Sixty percent of the federal budget -- interest payments, medical care, retirement costs, food stamps and income support, and corporate tax subsidies -- are not touched. The deficit is $1.3 trillion -- you would have to eliminate both the entire military and all of the public services provided by federal government to balance the budget by cutting those two functions. Not even Grover Norquist would go that far.
2. The agreement contains a series of foolish, unpopular, and profoundly unserious trade-offs. A serious country wouldn't retain tax subsidies for the governments of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, while cutting medical research. A serious country with the least-competitive infrastructure in the advanced world would not accelerate its disinvestment in its bridges, highways, mass transit systems, and electrical grid, while giving hedge fund managers uniquely privileged tax treatment.  A serious country whose greatest fiscal challenge is cutting the cost of health care would not slash activities like cleaning up pollution, developing new health care technologies, and improving nutritional education that are the cheapest way to cut health care burdens. A serious country whose children fall farther behind global standards for science and math every year would not devastate educational funding while continuing to give tax breaks to corporations that move jobs overseas to find a better-educated workforce. A serious country whose economy is being destroyed by a $300 billion a year imported oil bill would not eliminate funding for the very programs that might enable it to kick its long-standing oil addiction, while refusing to touch subsidies to the world's most profitable (and often foreign) oil companies. It would also rethink its repudiation of a deficit-reducing tax on carbon.
3. Environmentally, the proposed cuts in domestic spending would be incredibly damaging and would effectively preclude the government from giving Americans the environmental safety net they want. There wouldn't be enough money to invest in clean energy research. We wouldn't be able to restore our dilapidated, leaking, unhealthy system of sewers and sewage treatment. Research into the toxic chemicals that are sickening and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans would be hampered. Fundamental environmental law enforcement would slow. Parks would continue to decay. Ecosystems on which our communities depend would unravel. Mass transit would rust. The clean energy future would be strangled in its crib -- it's really not Hercules. Coal and oil would rule our future.
4. Fortunately, the short-term deficit came from factors we can reverse: the Bush tax cuts, two wars, the Bush prescription drug plan, and (hopefully) the Great Recession. It's obvious how to fix the first two -- restore taxes to their 2000 levels and bring the troops home.
5. To deal with the fiscal impact of the recession, we need to restore economic growth. But we need greater domestic demand to get the economy going -- and the default package actually cuts demand, putting us deeper in the hole. A serious country would do that only if it thought of itself as part of the "Anglo-American world." Britain is being as foolish -- and it's not working there either. But in my next post I'll offer a fix for this.
6. The Bush prescription drug plan is only one part of the one long-term fiscal challenge we face -- bringing down the cost of health care. That is urgent and will take time, but if we solve the rest of the fiscal imbalance, we have time.
The good news is that very few of those who voted for this "compromise" have any illusion that it is a true fiscal blue-print. It avoided a default, which was incredibly important, and it made the next election a campaign about the role of government. Democrats are demoralized, as they should be, by their lack of an effective negotiating strategy. And Republicans (the sensible ones, at least) are terrified because they don't have a solution and their settling on this fig leaf shows it.
This profoundly unserious plan has set up a profoundly serious national debate -- are we going to be Europe or yesterday's Latin America? It's revealing that the reactionary Tea Party Right consistently frames the choice facing America as whether we are going to become like Europe -- when the reality is we more and more resemble a dysfunctional 1970s Latin American oligarchy.
I'll close this post by pointing out an irony. Francis Fukuyama, widely viewed as a hero to the conservative movement, has just published a new book, The Origins of Political Order. In it he frames what he thinks is the fundamental question facing the 21st century. Surprise, it's not "How do we get government off our back or drown it in a bathtub?" No, for Fukuyama, it is axiomatic that what people want today is to become -- DENMARK. The big question is how to create government institutions that can do what the Danish state has accomplished.
I think he's right. What people in Somalia and Afghanistan want is to become more like Denmark. But for the United States, I think there is a different question -- how do we remain America?
Denmark is probably not an option. We are not yet Paraguay. But we are headed somewhere in that direction.
Fortunately, because we have been so foolish and wasteful, we have some simple solutions. That's the great advantage of stupidity. It is optional.
So my next post will discuss what to do and why, in fact, there is a free lunch!
Follow Carl Pope on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlPope

"there were no words, but images flooded every cell in her being ...4 and a half decades!"

"there were no words, but images flooded every cell in her being ...4 and a half decades!"