Best Of
Re: The Other Elephant In The Room
I have always liked Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez political stance...which comes from the heart...
Mr. Speaker, I know a man, a decent man, who said that preventing genocide is an achievable goal. A goal that requires a level of government organization and engagement that matches in its intensity the brutality and efficiency required to carry out mass killing. Too often, these efforts have come too late, after the best and least costly opportunities to prevent them have been missed. The man that said that was then Vice President and now President Joseph Biden, and he was right.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to say that such a time is now. As we speak in this moment, millions of innocents in Gaza are at the famine door. A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government. This is a mass starvation of people, engineered and orchestrated following the killing of another, the majority of whom were women and children. Hospitals are scarce, and much of this was accomplished with US resources and weapons.
If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of millions of innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away. It looks like good and decent people who do nothing or too little, too late.
It is against United States law to provide weapons to forces who block United States humanitarian assistance, and that is exactly what is happening right now. So much so that the President himself stated during the State of the Union that the United States must and will be building its own port to let aid through. It will be too late. The time is now to force compliance with US law and the standards of humanity. We must fulfill our obligations to the American people to suspend the transfer of US weapons to the Israeli government in order to stop and prevent further atrocity.
Honoring our alliances does not mean facilitating mass killing. We cannot hide from our responsibility any longer. Blocking assistance from one's closest allies to starve a million people is not unintentional. We have a responsibility to prove the value of global democracy, enshrined in the upholding of civil society, rule of law, and commitment to human and civil rights.
This is not just about Israel or Gaza; this is about us. The world will never be the same, and we will never be the same. We must write our story in this moment of what it means and who we are as Americans. And our story must be not that we were good men who did nothing, but that we were a committed democracy that did something. And we must prove that now. With that, I yield back. Thank you.
Shoshin1
Re: Closure and burying the hatchet, or just let it go?
A couple of practical notes come to mind about your thread.
At least as far as I understand from what you have explained...
One of these brothers is a rapist, while the other brother who had this rape situation explained to him, still chose to protect this perpetrator over the criminality that was committed against you, the victim. That makes him an accessory.
I would be hesitant to renew your contact with either of these individuals as they might reasonably perceive you as a credible threat to their current lifestyles, despite how benignly you think you might be able to present this renewed interest in them.
Your forgiveness of them does not really depend on renewing contact with them unless **you **make that contact a condition of your forgiveness.
I am not presuming to know if you should contact them or not. Just that if it's a "letting go" that you really seek, why should it depend on you deliberately re-entering this karmic arena with them again?
Be safe.
how
Re: The traces we leave
There you are on the far shore ... you start swimming back on a rescue mission. When you get back to samsara you find everyone is a teacher and you are in Nirvana, Still.
Where you going to swim to now? With the fishies?
lobster
Re: Closure and burying the hatchet, or just let it go?
I’m at a crossroads.
Whenever I am at a crossroads, I go somewhere else. Off-road, digging or flying. Surprisingly, you only have your dukkha/sukha/path. Amazingly, we all cross roads to get to the far shore. Chicken or roadrunner ...
Beep Beep ...
lobster
Re: The traces we leave
What we do makes a difference now. We don't have to be world changers to make the world a better place for those we come in contact with.
Unfortunately in this day and age so few people truly listen.
I feel this a lot when I think about getting more seriously involved in spirituality such that I could possibly teach others. For me its more like, no one would really care about or welcome my perspective. In order to teach I'd have to fall in line and offer the approved discourse.
person
Re: Closure and burying the hatchet, or just let it go?
@Jeroen said:
@IdleChater said:
Did you get counseling after the abuse?Not sure what relevance that has, although counselling now may provide another, non-Buddhist point of view on the question whether to resume contact.
It feels to me like the answer to your question has to do with how mature your peace is. If you still feel that contact with this man and his brother are going to trigger you to relive the event, then you are likely still carrying trauma from back then, and should seek professional psychological help. There are good therapies for dealing with trauma and flashbacks like EMDR, which can help relieve these things. Or you could try somatic experiencing. There are also good books on the subject, like ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.
Buddhism is very good for finding inner peace, but trauma is generally seated at deeper levels of the body-mind complex. You may find that your Buddhist peace gets sorely tested if you resume contact.
Thank you, what you said makes a lot of sense and I appreciate the book recommendation. I agree my buddhist beliefs would get tested, and they certainly did when three years after this incident a man tried to harm me at a train station, but it would have been a lot worse. I realise this is all my karmic seeds ripening, but it can be overwhelming when it’s constant.
EMDR and TRTP are two therapies I’m considering.
Thank you again. 🌹
Re: Closure and burying the hatchet, or just let it go?
@IdleChater said:
Did you get counseling after the abuse?
I did, a rape counsellor was in the doctor’s surgery that morning. I saw her for about six months, but after a while I felt it was doing more damage when the counsellor ( as lovely as she was) wanted me to talk about my parents and childhood. I felt it was irrelevant to my experience.
Re: Closure and burying the hatchet, or just let it go?
@IdleChater said:
Did you get counseling after the abuse?
Not sure what relevance that has, although counselling now may provide another, non-Buddhist point of view on the question whether to resume contact.
It feels to me like the answer to your question has to do with how mature your peace is. If you still feel that contact with this man and his brother are going to trigger you to relive the event, then you are likely still carrying trauma from back then, and should seek professional psychological help. There are good therapies for dealing with trauma and flashbacks like EMDR, which can help relieve these things. Or you could try somatic experiencing. There are also good books on the subject, like ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.
Buddhism is very good for finding inner peace, but trauma is generally seated at deeper levels of the body-mind complex. You may find that your Buddhist peace gets sorely tested if you resume contact.
Jeroen
Re: Closure and burying the hatchet, or just let it go?
I'm sure there are skillful and unskillful methods in which to approach him and broach this subject.
I'd like to give good advice but I really don't know what the good thing to do is. I think if you do approach him via email or social media, spell out your intentions (that you're looking for healing and possibly a reconnection?) and leave it totally up to him whether he wants to engage as it is asking quite a bit from him too.
person
Re: Closure and burying the hatchet, or just let it go?
Did you get counseling after the abuse?
