Stop Domestic Violence Against Women!

                               Stop Domestic Violence Against Women!

 

                                              

 

                     “She could just pack up and leave, but she does not visualize what's beyond ahead.”
                        ―Nuria Ano

 

I am writing this to honor the woman and children who continue to suffer from Domestic Violence, and to raise awareness as to how D.V. is caused and perpetuated in our society as well as around the world.

I have worked as an advocate for woman and children (as well as men), all my life, and I see the substratum of abuse seeded in the Judeo/Christian/Muslim ethos. This has made me unpopular in many circles, because churches are involved in so many outreaches, all-be-it misguided ways to help, those in need. But what the churches don’t want to see, is that they are the ones causing what they are seeking to cure.

                                                         Double Bind

 

Those of you that know my writing, know that I’m constantly pointing to double bind, double speak, and otherwise mindfuck situations that we are facing more and more in our modern world. As Virginia Satir wrote about in “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” conflicting messages that are internalized by the child creates disassociation, anxiety, and many neurotic symptoms, so too our modern world is rife with conflicting messages, paradoxical, ambiguous, and contradictory meanings and intentions that leave people in a state of angst and stress.

 

Just like the disease of addiction leaves one in a state of ‘the more you have the more you want’, our society and institutions betray and belie the very intentions they espouse. Examples include; our mental health and educational systems which, because they are so broken, are causing the very things they are seeking to fix i.e. mental illness, and ignorance. Similarly, the “War on Drugs” campaign has contributed to addiction, and modern technology, although marketed as a way to bring people closer, actually contributes to people’s sense of alienation, isolation, and overall stress.

 

The same is true of our religious institutions. But how are the three Abrahamic religions contributing to the cause of Domestic Violence? It is because they are fundamentally anti-feminine, and by extension, anti-women. It is because they teach and propagate a woman’s subjugation, subservience, obedience, and degradation to and by men.

 

In these religious traditions, women are seen as the cause of the original and continuing “fall of man.” In Greek culture, which is the foundation of all Western culture, Pandora was the first human woman created by the gods. Each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to mold her out of earth as part of the punishment of humanity for Prometheus’ theft of the secret of fire, and all the gods joined in offering her "seductive gifts". Here we see the seeds of the Abrahamic religions, which are fundamentally anti-feminine, attributing mythologically all blame, punishment, suffering and seduction of humanity to woman.

 

 

This kind of cultural matrix breeds contempt and fear that men develop in relation to the feminine. Homophobia is a kind of male fear reaction of a man’s own feminine softness. (I will acknowledge, there is a positive movement among Christians as being more accepting of homosexuality-52%).

 

According to the Greek myth, Pandora opened a jar (pithos), in modern accounts sometimes mistranslated as "Pandora’s box" releasing all the evils of humanity—although the particular evils, aside from plagues and diseases, are not specified in detail by Hesiod—leaving only Hope inside once she had closed it again.

 

 

This, of course is the same story as Eve and her apple, seducing innocent Adam into his fall. Just as Eve is taken from Adam’s rib, she doesn’t even merit having her own clay to be fashioned, she is dependent on a man!

 

At the same time, women are held up as iconic, transcendental objects that are to be worshiped as long as the woman remains ‘contained’ and held in the masculine projection, in other words, if she ‘behaves and keeps her place’. We can call this the virgin/Madonna/whore, schizoid, projection that all three Western religions subject women to.

 

But women play into this dynamic, (another view that has made me unpopular in D.V. circles, are my views that women participate in their own abuse). Women allow themselves to be worshiped and cast in the light of the masculine projection, they internalize what they are 'supposed' to look like, how to act, and how to be the man’s “better half.” They raise their sons to be the man of the house, king of the castle, and wear the pants in the family.

 

 

One of several aspects of feminism from the 60’s is that, in the extreme, women became just like men. That is to say they became aggressive, cut throat in business, pissed standing up in urinals, and became evangelical Republican’s hunting with shotguns.

 

 

These women again played into the masculine shadow by joining the dark side. Now-a-days women are wanting to go into combat, fighting brutally in cages (mixed martial arts), and becoming corporate executives ‘raping and pillaging’.

 

When I first brought these issues up years ago, I was at a conference sponsored by churches, there were preachers, and a ‘former’ domestic violence perpetrator on a panel that was now working as a counselor to ‘help’ victims. He would put his hands on the woman sitting next to him when he made a point, even touched her leg one time, it made my skin crawl!

 

Needless to say, shortly after,  I soon was not working in the D.V. field. My approach, in working with perpetrators was a no non-sense, cut the shit approach, where I would build rapport, and then challenge the men on their beliefs and attitudes of entitlement, insecurity, superiority, and their own lack of contact with their own feminine nature, which is soft, feeling, able to nurture, able to appreciate and savor beauty, sensitive, and as spontaneous and undomesticated as nature Herself.

 

 

Men are enculturated to believe they are weak if they show or feel emotion other than anger. This is also a myth that has been so damaging to men and boys.

 

  Religion, for early 60’s feminists, was the body that carried the disease of patriarchy, both a symptom and a sickness tied to women’s subordination and inferiority to men.   A world without religion for them would have been a return to conditions resembling primitive social organization and societies, before the advent of patriarchy co-opted religion to serve man’s interests of dominance and control. This is reminiscent of Lennon’s song “Imagine no religion…”

 

As long as the three Abrahamic religions exist in their present form, women will never be free and equal. These traditions need to be directly challenged for their anti-feminine traditions.

Consider the Catholic churches view that women cannot merit the status and role of being a priest. But women stay in the church trying to change it from the inside, this is equivalent to a Black person being in the KKK, or a Jew being part of the Nazi party, trying to change it from the inside!

 

I appreciate religion as an empowerment for women, but look where it has got them over the last 100 years! Domestic violence rages on.

 

 

 

Religion, and the cultural matrix it engenders, has in large part, been responsible for the subjugation and degradation of women.

Over the centuries, the anti-feminine Biblical views have been absorbed into the fabric of our culture as nothing less than "The word of God."

 

 

What the Bible says about Women's Rights

Genesis 3:16

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Isaiah 3:12

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.

1 Corinthians11:3

But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

1 Corinthians 14:34-36

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

Ephesians 5:22-24

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

Colossians 3:18

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.

1 Timothy 2:11-15

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing.

Titus 2:4-5

Teach the young women to be ... obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

1 Peter 3:1

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.

 

In the Bible's book of Deuteronomy it says that if a man marries a woman and then decides that he hates her, he can claim she wasn't a virgin when they married. At that point her father must prove she was a virgin. (How is not explained.)  If he can't, then the girl is to be stoned to death at her father's doorstep.

1. If you see a pretty woman among your captives and would like her for a wife, then bring her home and "go in unto her." Later, if you decide you don't like her, you can simply "let her go." (Deuteronomy) 

2. If a betrothed virgin is raped in the city and doesn't cry out loud enough, then "the men of the city shall stone her to death." (Deuteronomy)

3. In the book of Esther the king apparently decrees a sex contest among young virgin women to see who can best please him. (There is debate on how.)  He eventually chooses Esther. However, since women are viewed as inherently dirty, Esther must be "purified" for twelve months before she can be made queen. (Esther)

4.  Paul points out in New Testament Romans that "the natural use" of women is to provide men with sex. (Romans)

5. Heaven is to be inhabited by 144,000 virgin men who have not been "defiled" by women. (RE 14:1-4) [One wonders how this squares with God's command to, "Be fruitful and multiply...(Genesis )]

6. A group of sexual depraved men beat on the door of an old man's house demanding that he turn over to them a male house guest. Instead, the old man offers his virgin daughter and his guest's wife: "Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine (wife); let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do with them what seems good to you; but against this man do not do so vile a thing." The women were subsequently ravished and killed. (JG))

7.  In Exod. we see that it is permissible to sell one's daughter (but apparently not one's son) into slavery.

8. According to St. Jerome, "Nothing is so unclean as a woman in her periods; what she touches she causes to be unclean."  In Leviticus it states, "If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days...if she bears a female child she shall be unclean two weeks...." 

9. "A woman dropped a stone on his head and cracked his skull. Hurriedly he called to his armor-bearer, 'Draw your sword and kill me, so that they can't say a woman killed me.' So his servant ran him through, and he died." (Judges)

10. Under God's direction, Moses' army kills all the adult males, but they mercifully just take the women and children captive. When Moses learns that they left some women and children alive, he angrily says: "Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him." Throughout Bible history God is said to demand that thousands, if not millions, of men, women and children be slaughtered.  And they are.

11.  A man has an obligation to produce a child with his brother's widow. If he refuses, his sister-in-law is to spit in his face in front of the elders. (Deuteronomy 25:5-9) And in case you are Jewish, you may be familiar with the Jewish prayer: "Blessed be the God who has not created me a heathen, a slave or a woman."

 

Most Old Testament law dates back centuries to Jewish tribal law and would be considered not only immoral but illegal today.  At the same time, fundamentalist, Bible-carrying Christians claim they are the for-all-time, the inviolable Word of God. And we all know the terror that extreme Islam has and continues to inflict on women. It’s time to raise awareness and bring people together to challenge the 2,000 year old campaign against women!

 

 

 

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Spirituality and Religion

                                                          Spirituality and Religion

 

                             

 

                                                   Imagine there's no countries
                                                       It isn't hard to do
                                                  Nothing to kill or die for
                                                 And no religion too

                                                                John Lennon

 

In these times of religious and political extremism, I think it is valuable to outline some key differences between religion and spirituality. It is simplistic and reductionist to paint religion as “bad” and spirituality as “good”, but I have to make choices of focus here to make a few basic points, so I will accentuate how bad religion can get and how liberating spirituality can be so as to differentiate where I see us in our human evolution.

Let’s begin with etymology; the word religion comes from the Latin word religio meaning "taboo, restraint."

So we can see from the beginning something indicating a “no no, that one should hold back from.” This is our first clue that religion is fundamentally about holding back, holding on, or clinging. Other etymology of the word religion reveals the word comes from the two words re and ligare. Re is a prefix meaning "return," and ligare means "to bind;" in other words, "return to bondage." In surgery a suture that ties a wound together is called a ligature.

 

By contrast, the etymology of the word spirit comes from the Latin spiritualis "of or pertaining to breath, breathing, wind, or air; pertaining to spirit, from spiritus of breathing, of the spirit."

Thus, spirit is connected with that which is life giving and life promoting as in “God breathed life into her.”

 

                                    

 

This life giving, life promoting quality is the animating principle. Jungians describe the anima and animas as the soul quality of a man and woman respectively, and developing a relationship with one’s anima and animas is seen as the core of spiritual/soul work for Jungians.

 

Very early in religious thought, there was a dichotomy between that which is of the flesh and that which is of the spirit. So we can see a real divisiveness set up in religious thought which has contributed to a lot of suffering. I am pointing here to the exclusivity of religious thought as black/white, with us/against us, either/or thinking. Whereas the essential nature of spiritual experience is unitive in nature vs. dualistic.

 

I am pointing here to religion as “belief in God or gods to be worshipped, usually expressed in conduct and ritual” or “any specific system of belief, worship, etc., often involving a code of ethics.” I am pointing to spirituality as an individual experience of the divine that is transcendental. I am denoting religion as conceptual and spirituality as experiential.

 

In my therapeutic style, I take a very spiritual approach regardless of one’s religious beliefs. I’m interested in how one’s beliefs are experienced in the present moment. This is because I see humans as essentially spiritual beings (yes, this is a belief and concept). So we do bring concept in here, but it is used to point beyond concept. As in Zen, and all good spiritual practices, concept is used to transcend concept; a finger pointing at the moon. But we must remember the map is not the territory!

 

From a biological, anthropological, and social perspective, I’m placing spirituality in a context that is conducive to the well-being and survival of social animals, particularly the great apes:

"attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group".

 

 

All of these qualities contribute to groups and individuals “doing well.” And conversely, a lack of these qualities can and do endanger groups, nations, civilizations and species.

 

 

Religion and religiosity can be seen as attempts to organize and bureaucratize these qualities of spirit. Religion is the attempts of organizing, politicizing, and controlling others, which has very little to do with spirituality, which is about freedom.

 

Stephen Jay Gould suggests that; religion may have grown out of evolutionary changes which favored larger brains as a means of cementing group coherence among savannah hunters, after that, a larger brain enabled reflection on the inevitability of personal mortality.

 

For humans, the increased size of the neocortex is associated with our sense of self-consciousness, language and emotion, which contributed to tool use, social complexity, magical animism, and art. Neocortex size correlates with a number of social variables that include social group size and complexity of mating behaviors. In chimpanzees, the neocortex occupies 50% of the brain, whereas in modern humans it occupies 80% of the brain.

 

In addition to this self-awareness, would be the evolving capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, realization of “self” and a sense of continuity, that is to say; birth, life, death, and beyond.

 

The earliest religious rituals including; burial of the dead, magical hunting cave pictures, and eventual causal supernatural “explanations” of natural phenomenon such as lightening, and earth quakes, evolved into the  need to share individual hypotheses with others, which in turn led eventually to collective religious belief.

 

 

A socially accepted hypothesis becomes dogmatic when it is backed by social sanction. This dogma, backed by social sanction is what I’m calling religious, and although it has served a particular psychosocial purpose in our past, it is now time to assess it in a whole new light.

 

 

Religious beliefs of supernatural explanations are arbitrary and confuse the symbolic meaning with historic fact. Whether it’s a burning bush, golden tablets, rising from the dead, black cats, #13, or any number of beliefs that have become codified and subsumed into some kind of orthodoxy, they are leading humans toward greater and greater suffering and division.

 

The violent and oppressive orthodoxy of the three Western religions that all originate from the same ethnic, geographic, and spiritual genesis which is Abrahamic, are contributing to most of the world’s terror and distress.

It is time, like Lennon’s song says to “Imagine no religion, I wonder if you can…”

 

 

I’ll leave you with just a few happy, uplifting religious quotes to drive my point home.

 

"Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and possess the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants."

- Isaiah 14:21

 

"You are my battle-ax and sword," says the LORD. "With you I will shatter nations and destroy many kingdoms. With you I will shatter armies, destroying the horse and rider, the chariot and charioteer. With you I will shatter men and women, old people and children, young men and maidens. With you I will shatter shepherds and flocks, farmers and oxen, captains and rulers."

- Jeremiah 51:20

 

"Cursed be he who does the Lords work remissly, cursed he who holds back his sword from blood."

- Jeremiah 48:10

 

"This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Strap on your swords! Go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other, killing even your brothers, friends, and neighbors."

- Exodus 32:26

 

"Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ." (Ephesians 6:5)

 

"Slaves, obey your human masters in everything; don't work only while being watched, in order to please men, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord." (Colossians 3:22)

 

"Slaves are to be submissive to their masters in everything, and to be well-pleasing, not talking back ." (Titus 2:9)

 

"Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel. " (1 Peter 2:18)

 

"One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the congregation of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 23:2)

 

"If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched." (Mark 9:43)

"If any man takes a wife, and goes in on her, and detests her, and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings a bad name on her, and says, 'I took this woman, and when I came to her I found she was not a virgin..." (Deuteronomy 22:13,14)

 

"But if ... evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones..." (Deuteronomy 22:20,21)

 

“Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her as a covering."

1 Corinthians 11:13-15

 

"Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says."

1 Corinthians 14:34

 

 

 

 

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Confessions of a Baby Boomer

                                              Confessions of a Baby Boomer

 

                                        

 

                                      "All I’m gonna do is just go on and do what I feel."
                                                                                    ~ Jimi Hendrix

 

I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s at the epicenter of a revolution in human consciousness in California. I had a privileged, upper white, middle class, great education, sheltered life (materialistically at least). And I was exposed and influenced to my core by humanist psychology, Feminism, Civil rights, mind expanding drugs, music, Eastern philosophy, Ecology, self-growth movements, and many other revolutionary ideas and experiences. This certainly left a very positive influence on me in terms of being a radical thinker and expressing myself in many ways to help, entertain, and bring my gifts to others. But it also gave me what Ken Wilber calls Boomeritis.

 

The dark and pathologic side of my cultural matrix is that I have a part of me that thinks I can save the world, not like a Messiah (ok, sometimes like a Messiah), but more in terms of my intentions and efforts with others, that we can build a peaceful happy world. I have a part that thinks it’s only a matter of time before people ‘get it,’ and start living the way I think they should. 

I have parts that are willing to work for peace and change, as long as I don’t have to change, or give up any of my comforts, securities or addictions. These are all symptoms of Boomeritis, and these are the symptoms of my generation that are in my view; ‘holding us back’, even though we Boomers think that everyone else is holding us back!

 

 

My Baby Boomer generation is one that is stuck in the idealism of an entitled youth that doesn’t want to accept and learn about the realities outside its narcissistic idealism. It is a kind of cruel irony that so many of my generation have dreams of a unified world that we have worked all of our lives to actualize, and that we have been the ones standing in our own way toward the actualization of our own dreams. A good example of this is public mental health systems, which are set up to help promote mental health, but in fact contribute to mental illness, because the systems themselves are “mentally ill.”

 

Ken Wilber’s 2002 book “Boomeritis” is a fictional expose on the ‘disease’ of the baby boomers which he describes as “the deadly combination of a modern liberal, egalitarian worldview with a deep unquestioned narcissism, it is a pluralism infected with narcissism."

 

  Pluralism, certainly very positive, is our current ‘politically correct,’ social reality, where diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups mix within one society. This shift in consciousness in the 60’s, gave rise to cultural anthropology, feminism, civil rights, ecology, and multicultural sensitivity, all quantum leaps in our evolution as a species.

 

But this pluralism had a dark side, and was a breeding ground for all kinds of trouble. So we had ideas that “You have your truth and I have mine, you do your thing, I’ll do mine, make love not war, if it feels good to you and it won’t hurt others, do it man! Leary had his banner “Turn on, tune in, and drop out,” which was great to expand your mind, tune in to ‘alternate realities’, and drop out of the oppressive systems.

 

But there was incredible hypocrisy in that most of us were doing all that tuning in and turning on with daddy’s $, and daddy was certainly part of the system we were trying to drop out from!

Eventually we ‘grew up’ and had to join the system. But we didn’t really grow up, we remained stuck in a kind of adolescent, entitled, indulgent, and naïve narcissism (see Robert Bly’s book “The Sibling Society”).

 

Another dark side of Boomeritis is the leveling and flattening of consciousness that extreme egalitarianism leads to. Because every world view has equal validity, there is no ‘better,’ no hierarchy, no developmental stages to move through and to. This lends itself toward a passivity and complacency where people don’t really have to look at themselves and change. They become comfortable in their bubble of ‘tolerance.’

 

There’s a video on youtube called “I’m not Black, you’re not White.” It’s like that old coke commercial with Michael Jackson “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”  It’s incredibly naïve and wrong in my view. To be Black or White is not a label meant to judge or stereotype, but it is a cultural identity that is different, and should be acknowledged, celebrated and understood as such.

 

Just as men and women are different, and the differences should be acknowledged (I acknowledge this could be dangerous!). There are aspects of one gender or another, one culture or another that are indeed ‘better,’ more skilled, and more conscious than another and should be studied and accessed in their ‘betterness,’ to help, just as someone would want to hang out with Michael Jorden if they wanted to become a better basketball player, because he is indeed BETTER than someone else.

 

Men are overwhelmingly better parallel parkers than women, and can throw shit farther with better accuracy, women are infinitely better multitaskers, can tolerate pain better, and infinitely more emotionally and relationally attuned than men. And, in spite of the military caving to political pressure, there is good evidence to show that women suck in combat conditions (this is a compliment!).

 

Boomers have moved beyond the previous cultural stages of traditionalism and scientific modernism and as such can claim to have propelled consciousness beyond those specific stages, but they are blind as to the fact that there are and will always be a certain demographic that will not be able to see beyond traditional values, or scientific materialism, or tribal, monotheistic extremism such as isis.

 

This fact is something Boomers have their head in the sand (or worse) about. Because Boomers have this idea that we can all join hands, take off all our labels, and sing kumbaya, they fail to make room and choice for other modes of consciousness they don’t like, they think; 'Eventually, they'll come over from the dark side into Boomerville.'

 

This is where the system of Spiral Dynamics is very important, and should be studied to help understand and bridge one mode of consciousness with another, this will not happen in the Boomer mind!

 

Last but not least, is Boomer narcissism, which unapologetically labeled ourselves "the Me generation," which is very accurate in that we are so focused on ourselves; going to retreats, going to therapy, posting on facebook, getting another bumpersticker, learning how to live longer, etc. that we lack the discipline, sacrifice, and service to actually serve something beyond our own sense of reality.

 

So we are incredibly vulnerable and indulgent to cult psychology like Scientology or gurus, or therapists, or facebook, or models, or do good causes, that we aren’t willing to actually change ourselves and really see our dark side, because of all the “good” that we are intending.

 

So do your best to put up and help us aging hippie babies who mean well, but will kill you (if you’re not careful), with our ideas, philosophies, youtube video’s, and save the gay whale protests, till the cows come home to the organic Woodstock farm!