Nourishment - part I

On connection and disconnection - in communities, brains, gut biomes and forest floors. To name a few.

You know me by now. We are about to embark on a journey, we will build a thesis in sections, and at the end of this adventure I may be able to help piece something together so that you may see the world in a way that you may not have been able to see before. That’s my goal anyways. We will go through blind kittens, baby surgery, LOTS of potatoes, infant swimming, tribal consciousness, old lineages, human development as analogous to computers rebooting, romance as an addiction, aquatic ape theory, and maybe even autoimmune diseases. We’ll see.

All of this, in order to arrive at one conclusion - It is all about density. Density, gravity, core humanity, rich juicy and well trained neural networks, and how to build and sustain them, while not being able to see what we are not able to see.

I am very likely going to piss you off a number of times along the way, my apologies in advance, it is far far from my intetion to do so, and I will do my absolute very best to minimize this possibility.

So. Sit back, wish me luck, and let’s begin.

On Blindness

Before we even start, I would like to ask you to google “The Hubel and Wiesel cat experiment” for yourself. And I want you to also google “When did we learn that babies can feel pain.” That one may be harder to swallow.

I will tell you in my own words in a sec, but I want you to see for yourself that I am not making this stuff up. It is out there, it is researched, and at least in the 90s, most psychology students had to learn about the cat experiment, cutely dubbed “The Pirate Kitty Experiment” despite the fact that it was more like a reversed Clockwork Orange situation…

So, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel in the 1950s were studying a part of the brain known as the primary visual cortex. What they wanted to know was how neurons responded to different shapes, and they chose to work with cats. Perhaps because cats have large developed visual centers.

So to just band-aid this for you, I will tell you quickly that they sutured kittens’ eyelids shut from birth, in one eye, and let them run around like that for a couple of months. They had a control group that didn’t have that procedure done to, and then they removed the sutures, and what they discovered was that though both groups had perfectly healthy and functioning eyes, the first group of cats was in fact fully BLIND in one eye, and could see through the other eye perfectly.

They ran cat scans (I had to, come on… That’s funny…) and found that the cats’ BRAINS were not developed in one side. In fact, the neural networks were shockingly sparse. The density of the neural network was minimal and astoundingly underdeveloped. It was like looking at a very remote sleepy rural area on an island in the pacific at night vs. looking at a gigantic bustling metropolis.

So the Hardware (eye) was there, but the Software (brain development) was not. It was like getting a super computer with an empty hard drive and no operating system, to try and connect to the internet.

Mind, it was in days when scientific experimentation in humans was still widely allowed, so cats were not a real ethical concern for most neuroscientists. No one was having large protests about bunnies in the cosmetics industry just yet, they were still struggling with incredibly basic human rights, and basic food availability and in many places basic survival, so cute cats on the interwebs and media influencers were not yet a thing.

As for the other one, the information about babies and pain… I believe most people do not have any idea about what was done to babies in medical settings until as late as 40 years ago, in the US.

Seriously, I need you to sit down for the following piece of information because it is both astounding and horrible at the same time (If you are the kind of person who needs trigger warnings, I don’t know what you’re doing still reading this blog, but hey, you do you.)

Ready? Here goes - The medical profession began to recognize that babies can feel pain in 1987, when the American Academy of Pediatrics declared it unethical to operate on newborns without anesthesia.

1987 y’all.

I was in the 7th grade. Babies were still operated on without anesthesia when Rick Astley was singing “Never gonna give you up.”

This change came after decades of research and evidence that showed infants have distinct physiological reactions to invasive procedures, and that they can, in fact, experience pain. Do you see why it took that much longer to get that fish do too? Tomatoes?

Babies were operated on without anesthesia regularly until that point. They would drug them, but it was to keep them from moving, crying, and interfering with the surgery, and not in order to numb the pain or make them unconscious of it.

They were basically immobilized, feeling everything, conscious, and getting operated on.

Let that horrible fact sink in.

And they died too. The dear little ones. They just died of the shock of pain and horror, not of the actual procedure. The understanding in the medical profession was that they were just really fragile. And some still associate the numbers of “baby death decline” with advances in technology, not simply with the compassionate empathic understanding that they are as human as everyone else.

The descriptions I read of this standard practice are pretty horrific. You are welcome to Google that little fun tidbit for yourself if you’d like. Oh, and parents were not actually told that the babies would not receive pain relief. This information was mostly withheld.

I say, just remember the above next time you think poorly of your parents or of genXers, they probably were treated horribly as young beings, even if their parents were loving, and weren't actively malevolent, or didn’t actively beat them up, no one around thought that they may experience pain if you cut on them. And no one had taught them that they’re supposed to have “Pre Verbal Trauma” back then. They just had it. Pretty much all of them. All of us, really. Including and not limited to all the little baby boys who were circumcised in early infancy and screamed their little hearts out. “Babies simply cry. That's what babies do.”

We are not yet fully realising the magnitude of the trauma to young male bodies over the removal of a vital organ essential to sexual activity and pleasure before they can say anything about it. (A post about that is coming soon.)

Yes, Gen Z’s, there’s something stinking adorable in all the “trauma” talk over how mom said something about your weight or did not acknowledge gender pronouns that one time over dinner. I don’t know why gen X sometimes has a hard time taking all of this stuff too seriously… :)
(Side note: this is Alex Honold speaking on how silly modern anxiety is. As someone who grew up in a war zone? I tend to agree. Anxiety in and of itself truly doesn’t make sense.)

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So the pirate cat experiment taught us that the brain must be exposed to certain sights early in life, or it will remain blind to interpreting signals from the eyes forever.

Imagine that.

So, we can fairly assume, based on this and other experiments in humans that I can link up here, as it had been clearly established since, that the brain develops (or stunts) by exposure to stimuli at specific stages of development; That if you do not start the process at the right time, there may never be a chance for it to build appropriately.

If the network isn’t established at the correct window of opportunity, there may never be a chance for the network to actually be created.

Can All Babies Swim? - Part I

(or “Reflexes as some of the most important evolutionary investments”)

Well, the short answer is yes. Now let me tell you a little bit more about that.

I will use a metaphor from the software world, but it really does not require any knowledge of computers whatsoever. If it feels confusing, think of it as books. Manuals, really.

When babies are born (all human babies, in every culture and in every context) they come in with what in the software world we would call Firmware. The Hardware is the physical bits. The “Brain” matter, it’s the bones and the tissues themselves, the eyes as for the cats.. But not anything that these bits actually do. The Software is everything that we will end up “Knowing” how to do - like to build the neuron network that knows how to interpret the signals that come into our visual cortex into objects and movement and things… Like walking, or singing, like language, like, pretty much anything we can do and understand and repeat as organisms. We basically run software programs that we acquire and develop with time and practice.

When we are born we do not see well, we do not move well, we don’t know how to chew. What we have is a brain that has very rudimentary basics , and is very eager to learn, and the minimal YET CRITICAL special “software” that will allow the brain to learn more software. For example, reflexes like the rooting reflex - that makes every baby turn his head and seek a nipple with his mouth. Regardless of whether his mom is going to breastfeed him or not. Like a reflex that allows minutes-old infants to CRAWL on their mom’s belly and reach her breasts.

So, for the blind cats? They had the Hardware just fine, the eyes were perfect, and the brain was ready to develop and learn and install the Software based on the environment, but there was not enough stimuli for this Software to develop. Their neurons ended up being very sparse, and they missed a critical stage before the brain lost the original Firmware to interpret the signals with.

That’s why, despite being mammals, babies who do not encounter breastfeeding, lose the capacity to extract breastmilk from their mothers’ breasts after a short period of bottle feeding. And if mothers cannot afford continuing purchasing formula, and you also market it to countries that do not have clean water sources, you can doom over 10 MILLION babies to death globally.

Quoting Wikipedia on the Nestle Boycott: In a 2018 study, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) estimated that 10,870,000 infants had died between 1960 and 2015 as a result of Nestlé baby formula used by "mothers [in low and middle-income countries] without clean water sources", with deaths peaking at 212,000 in 1981.

So, when we are born, there are bits that expect that when X happens outside of us, in the world, it will make the eyes send some other things back into the brain, and the brain is expecting those, in order to create the new connections and to write the software that would make meaning of it. Ok. Ok. Take a breath with me.

We have a machine, it knows just the very minimal basics, and it expects the world to behave in a certain way, so that from the basics+stimuli, it would DEVELOP the complexity.

If the world does not provide the stimuli? The software will simply not develop.

Sometimes ever.

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A Deeper Detour Into The Techy Metaphor

(You are welcome to skip this part, we go straight to potatoes and aquatic apes from here)

Software and Firmware for computers are both sets of instructions that operate devices, but they have different purposes, scopes, and they are living in very different locations.

Think of the Software as the biggest library in the world. And of being able to read software, as the ability to read any book written ever. Firmware, then, is the one book to bind them all… :) It is the book that is hardwired into the brain, that teaches the brain how to read any other book.

Without the Firmware you cannot understand ANYTHING. It has a special place in the computer because once you turn the computer off, it becomes dumb again and doesn’t know how to read books anymore.

So Firmware is therefore embedded into the computer, it is kept at a special place, and that is where the computer goes first, so that the computer will know how to computer. Otherwise, you can give your computer all the books in the world, and it will just sit there, as a brick full of wires and electronics that doesn’t know how to do anything. Even if it is fully plugged into electricity.

So, ALL computers, ALL computers, have their own little Origin Pamphlet, that teaches them how to read all the other books. That’s what happens when you “Boot” a computer. This is a more “official” definition, for all my geeky readers. You can skip it if you'd like, we’ll be back to kittens and babies and what many in this society are fully blind to immediately after.

• Firmware

  A specific type of software that's embedded in a device's hardware to provide low-level control. Firmware's purpose is to help hardware start up, communicate with other devices, and perform basic input/output tasks. It's closely tied to the hardware it interacts with and is usually stored permanently in non-volatile memory, like ROM, EPROM, or flash memory. This makes firmware resistant to power loss and ensures it remains intact even when the device is turned off. 

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So, what does this have to do with kittens? and babies? [again, all you darlings that do not have technical brains - breathe in, breathe out, we’re almost out of here.]

As opposed to computers, we do not “lose” everything when we go to sleep. Phew. Once you boot a brain, it kinda keeps running till you die. We kinda only “boot” once when we are “born”.

However, as opposed to computers, that have these firmware thingies stay forever? We tend to lose them. They stay there for early development, expecting very specific stimuli to come in and develop the software, and then the brain will kinda stop going there, and may even write over those areas and we won’t have access to them anymore.

So the cats? They remained blind, despite the fact that they had healthy eyes, and despite the fact that they were exposed to sights later. Their brains didn’t have the right stimuli at the right time. End Game.

Can All Babies Swim? - Part II

(or “Chewing Therapy”)

Yes, I tell you, yes they can.

So When I was working with very young babies in the swimming pool, I learned some pretty critical things about human development.

But I will first tell you about this kid that was coming to the pool… he was not a baby, and he was autistic. And because he was aversed to textures and was tube-fed for a few critical years of his life, he never learned how to “chew" his food and had to go through chewing therapy.

Yes, you read this right.

When you think about it, we never intellectually learn how to chew. At the right time, the Firmware kicks in, which urges you to put things in your mouth and practice your tongue movement, and good biting rhythms. You have some innate movements that come with the Firmware, and not too many teeth to make mistakes with, and then you basically run the system into neurological connection and complexity, instinctively, and over time. Because your mom is putting things near your mouth, and you are rather compelled biologically to put things in your mouth. Part of the Firmware. Badaboom badabang.

You move the tongue here and there, and your teeth do things… it works. You don't think about it. The whole idea of this process is that it bypasses thinking.

And somehow you, and practically all babies around you, become quite an expert at eating food, moving it to and fro, adding saliva, moving the softer bits backward, and even swallowing while you are still chewing. It’s quite a marvelous software that you developed through using the firmware on constant, appropriate and timely stimuli. We don’t even stop to think about how marvelous this is.

This kid didn’t have that. He would chew on his tongue, and sometimes swallow his tongue, and swallow bits that were too big, or chew for too long. He needed to undergo pretty long therapy in order to consciously learn how to chew - “Now the food goes here, and you go down-down-down with your teeth while keeping the tongue out of the way, then you test the size, and if it small you send it back, be careful not to take too large bites.” I shit you not.

So babies can swim. All of them. If you catch them early enough and give them the stimuli that their brains expect to have.

This is an investment that all human brains, of all cultures, ensure that babies will have, otherwise they wouldn't have survived. And no, it has nothing to do with amniotic fluid, it happens well after birth and its a much more involved process. But the 9 months under water sure do help.

I personally think that it is quite damn important to develop ANY capacity if it is in the Firmware. What the Firmware looks like, is all the things that all babies have when they arrive - the reflexes, the urges, the behaviours, the biological milestones, and other systemic expectations. Including, but not limited to, eating, nursing, peeing, walking, crawling, meeting and being dunked in water, AND definitely also being wired for connection and tribe.

The little buggers know how to block their throat when water touches their face, they move their bodies in very specific ways when they are in the water, they open their eyes real wide, and plenty more. Regardless of where they are from in the world. It’s amazing really. I’ve seen it literally thousands of times. I am not confused about this fact.

Babies’ brains are wired to expect to be dunked in water and develop in response to that stimuli. Period.

Babies’ brains are also wired to be part of collectives, and we beat that out of them, in some cultures, sometimes irreversibly.

Can we learn how to swim if we do not utilise the firmware? Of course. All evidence supports this. But it would be like that kid who learned how to chew after he lost it. It would involve mental conscious effort, and will have to be practiced heavily until the neural pathways are laboriously established. And they can still be Michael Phelps if that’s what they are wired to be. Can you imagine how Phelps would have been able to swim if he had not started at the ripe age of 7?

The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis

What was astounding to me after dunking babies so many times, other than the fact that the ONLY factor that could predict the baby’s reaction to anything was the mother’s reaction (if mom was fearful, the baby would be fearful, she would still “do” it, but she would react emotionally to mom too. If mom was truly calm - not pretend calm - baby would be joyous and calm too.)

If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you dunk babies in water regularly and just hang with them in water enough? They will hang in the water like little fish. Consistently and reliably. Not always the most graceful swimmers, but definitely incredibly easeful and safe in water.

My own baby crossed the therapy pool on their own at 7 months old. Of course we created some drag, but this kid, who was in the pool with me daily because I was working with other babes, would bounce in, flip on her back and float on her own.

Witnessing all this with so much consistency was when I started thinking about other Firmware that we are not actually utilising, like the Moro reflex, or other reflexes that we think of as “Obsolete” which is astounding, considering that ALL BABIES, all over the world, have them.

And then you can’t not start thinking of things like “how come almost all toddlers leave their beds as soon as they can and try to get to their parents’ bed?” - or “why do all babies develop hysterical laughter around 5-7 months?” or “Why do all nursing toddlers go through a period of sleepless nights around 20 months old?”

If it seems like all babies “Got a memo” - it indicates to me that there is evolutionary wisdom there, a wisdom that is expecting a context to be there. things like co-sleeping, or developing the diaphragm, or nightly meals that involve fats.

The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis stipulates that the ancestors of modern humans took a divergent wayward evolutionary path from other great apes, by going through water.

If you’ve ever seen animals walk through the wet savanagh it’s not hard to imagine early humanoid tribes wading through water. Part of how we are different than apes and more similar to sea mammals is by not having fur, having our fatty tissues right under our skin (which supports insulation and floatation). I am not saying it is in any way proven, but I think it is worth consideration. I also think that this may be the reason for why we are erect, and why we have head hair that is growing long… That’s MY theory, I will leave you to this exercise. I know I enjoyed coming up with explanations and testing them in the pool :)

Ok. Now I am finally ready to talk about food. But first, we will use food just as a metaphor to the blind sparsity of actual nourishment…

The Potato Patch Paradox

As mentioned many times before, I am a Generation X, I grew up in a very different reality. I mean, it was a different country, a totally different society, and a decidedly different lineage and connection to heritage, food, family, community, and land. I grew up eating nourishing, nutrient-dense, non-pesticised, local, wild, well-nourished, tasty… mmm… let’s see…

Potatoes… yeah, let’s go with potatoes.

And then I came here, to the United States, and everyone kept telling me about their incredible traditional “Potato casserole”, so I inquired happily after that famous local delicacy, and smiled appreciatively at the interesting dish that was put in front of me, and then… then I ate it… and… I mean… it was not IN-edible… it looked rather appetizing, it was very… pretty? and… presentable?… and there was some pretty garnish on top?… but it was astoundingly devoid of all nourishment. I looked closely at the bite on my fork.

Huh.

It was not actually a potato this dish was made of, it looked more like potato peels actually. What an interesting concept. A whole casserole made out of potato peels. Fascinating.

And so I sat there, eating this thing that my gracious hosts were feeding me, and though I had my questions, I didn’t wish to insult anyone, so I kept my mouth shut, and thought it’s just a random fluke. But then I kept going to more dinner parties, and it became clear, as it happened again and again, pretty much everywhere I went. This thing from potato peels IS what they call a “potato casserole”.

I was getting progressively malnourished with every dinner party and potluck I went to… Getting uncomfortably kinda starved and miserable… While weirdly gaining weight. So I started asking people, politely, about the… you know… yellow part…

They were confused. They showed me their “prime” groceries and nodded at me vigorously. They had organic potato peels, fair trade potato peels, local potato peels, underground imported potato peels, certified ethically resourced potato peels, free range potato peels, and of course genetically modified potato peels. But, apparently, not a single potato.

I asked, with patience, because, what the heck do I know about the language here, or about the agriculture, or just the culture… I asked about the thing that this comes with, “you know, the yellow part. It’s round and has a lot more nourishment. A… potato?”

What do you mean by “Potato”? We just fed you our potato, you snob.

Apparently, they had never seen the thing, and they got upset with me because I was saying that their pride potato peel casserole, that was running in their families for generations was not “actual” potatoes.

Fuck. Go argue with THAT.

Not just a nourishment barrier, a massive language barrier at the same time. With time I started hearing people talking about “Real” potatoes, and every time I looked, I realised that they started calling the potato peels “real potatoes”. Crap. Crap crap. Crap.

And while trying to understand, and to explain, I got progressively malourished, and sicker from not getting well fed as I used to, and all the toxins in the peel were not really helping the matter, either, organic or not.

For the most part, I felt hunger, sadness and a deep desire to help. Like, because I know that it can be better because I had it better for decades, and I had the experience of nourishment, so I know that it can be available… I mean, it cannot be that hard... I also felt deprived and hungry for something that my body knew to be out there and related to this thing, and I now also felt desperately alone because it is quite a mindfuck to walk around with this knowing and have everyone blink at you, or tell you that potato peels are potatoes, or attack you for even suggesting that their casseroles are not the most nutritious thing in the world. Damn.

There were times, when I asked, that I saw a glint in someone’s eye. They had this Yellow substance inside one of the peels that they got from a garden in another country, that one time. They swear that they know what I am talking about. I get excited and, well, very hopeful!! I get convinced by their conviction, and so we start talking excitedly and animatedly about how great it was, and how great it will be, and about how we may be growing potatoes here in this country for others! We can help this place! Fuck yeah!

But then they look at me oddly “What? What do you mean to grow it? Why would we want to do that? That’s expensive, and we don’t have the technology, and no one even likes the flavour or understands this yellow bit. No no. We will just paint the potato peels yellow, grind them up and put them in new packaging, we will label the packaging “The Truly Very Real potato” and sell it to kindergarteners as the new-age green-wave post-consumerist solution. We will have retreats and workshops. It will be Sensational! Traditional! Back to nature! Into the future! All Natural! I know for sure that I can do it, because I saw it once! I am enlightened! I can teach the whole world what potatoes are! It is so important!! I am the potato guru now!”

Fuck.

So in my disappointed delirium, I decide to build a non-for-profit potato patch, while simultaneously starving. What a smart fucking move… I will start a patch at a place where no one knows how a potato even looks, and all the seeds are patented, appropriated and engineered, and they only produce… guess what? that’s right - fucking potato peels.. Jesus. And on top of all the other shit I have to deal with, I also have to deal with many people calling me insane and narcissistic and swearing either that there are no potatoes and it is all a scam, or that potato-peels are the only real true potatoes. Now go build a country.

This is Not Really About Potatoes - Duh

Look. Before we all get all defensive on me… And telling me I am insane again, let me tell you what the actual metaphor is, ok? So we won’t be all up in the air knotting our panties.

It’s Tribe. It’s collective consciousness. We are born WIRED for it. And some of us get dunked in it. Day in and day out. Again and again and again. And some of us are put in cribs and live in societies that separate and “individuate” us as a core motivating principle. It’s a training so rigorous and circular, that it feels practically impossible to undo.

Some of us have both cultures. And so we know which one is which and we can translate.

Collective consciousness is a core human capacity we are born to have and we need in otder to survive and thrive. And for some of us, in some countries and cultures, it is simply not developed, and perhaps never will be developed.

It doesn’t matter how many times you will use the word “tribe” or “community” in a sentence or in your workshop brochures, or how many books you have read about it by native writers, or even how many community houses you have lived in and how many medicine circles and tribal teachers you have had. I had seen the blind leading the blind here so many times that I cannot look at it anymore. It is so painful, so harmful. It creates more desolation and ultimately no health. Everybody is going to start an eco-village and raise their kids in “spiritual” communities that will revolve around them…

Can this upbringing be reversible? I mean.. If you have moved to a jungle at a fairly young age, and for a prolonged time? Maybe? Some of my best friends are mission kids and/or global citizens. I absolutely do not think that it is impossible, but it is definitely not enough for anyone to go to a workshop, feel the tribal field for a minute, know that something is different and feels more “healthy” and “true”, and then go on another WhatsApp group, and swear that they know what tribe is and believe that now they can teach it. Jesus. Please fucking stop. Thanks.

AND I do know some pretty cool tiny potato patches here in this country. They are genuinely incredibly wonderful. They can be well-established and/or well hidden, or kinda Beelzebub-y, treasure-island-y, primarily monocultures that are comprised of rather privileged people, beacsue it takes a lot to sustain these in this culture, and they don’t often have many responsible adults and elders in the mix. Or they tag onto native communities that suffer from other issues. I wholeheartedly hope and wish them many blessings and success and that the success will prevail and take hold for the entirety of society. I am FAR from being against that. Why would I be? I also do not want to just hide myself in one and forget that there’s a whole hellscape out there by saving my own ass.

The Nature of Addiction - Parts vs Whole

So what happens when you just eat potato peels your entire life?

Addiction. It is practically inevitable.

The reason **I** believe this happens, based on years of observation and research, is that when you give a body that expects a whole apple, only the apple juice, the body recognises that something is missing (the pulp, fiber, sensation of chewing, swallowing, saliva and much more) AND TRIES TO COMPLETE THE CIRCUIT. The way to complete it? Go for the thing that the body recognises as “Apple” - which is the apple juice. If I go for more apple juice, SURELY I will get the rest of the apple, no? No. What you get is more craving.

This REDUCTION process is why we see addiction to parts of any whole, be it sugar, nicotine, cocaine, or a visual on a screen that is 2D and has no smell, eye contact, or soul to it.

Before I use addiction to romance to demonstrate this, enjoy these fun facts: (You can geek out on global numbers here)

• According to the 2023 United States National Survey on Drug Use and Health: 48.5 million (16.7%) Americans (aged 12 and older) battled a substance use disorder in the past year. 10.2% of Americans 12 and older had an alcohol use disorder in the past year.

• In Sweden, 3.5 % of adults (aged 16–84) used illegal drugs during the past 12 months according to survey data from 2020, up from 2.5 % in 2014 (That’s a minimum of a single use, not a use disorder, mind)

• In Japan, drug use is at 0.4%

The United States consumes more illicit drugs than any other country in the world. In terms of consumption, the United States is the clear drug capital of the world. According to any report you look up, internal or external.

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On Addiction to “Love”

“I do not trust the urgency of romance.
Unions and relationships are not a means to an end.

Romance is, at its core, an addiction to a story that society is selling us. It's in service of escape, not of coming home.

Home to tribe, to soul, to divine love, to God, to the purpose of being alive in this world and this body. To tikkun olam. Healing the divine in us through what we received, the wisdom and the wounding that is us. It is all One.

Romance is the apple juice not the whole apple, it is the gratifying part of the whole that makes us crave the whole and go for the part again and again, a semblance of nourishment that deepens craving and starvation. Sugar Vs fruit. Alcohol Vs the birthright that is the full permission to be authentically you...

A neverending unsatisfied hope for the whole that never fully comes... It's the definition of addiction the way that I understand it. It is not a distraction, it is an actual broken attempt to connect with wholeness, with true union, with the divine, with soul.

When we are in the upper realms with each other, we do not just work to feed the parts that come from fear of abandonment, from pleasing our parents, from entertaining them so they'll stay, from fighting them for separation, from pure panic that soothes itself by controlling another's movements, cruely or sweetly, directly or manipulatively.

We're in the joy that comes from how perfectly our wounds and our gifts can actually complement and match, how we irritate just the right shadows in each other, to bring more and more healing to the world. We lean in, not out... To finally do the work we've been assigned.

Mine.
Yours.
Ours.

Oh how I love being in the trenches with you.”

Sigh.

Ok. Ok. This is a Mid-Thesis Quick Summary

• So we have babies who feel pain, and we have a part of the body (the foreskin) that was believed to either be useless (in the best case scenario) or causing impure behaviours (in the less than best scenario)

• And we have some understanding of Firmware, the biological evulutionary expectation for the environment to support the Firmware in developing the right Software.

• And we have a culture that is BLIND to the fact that its people are severely malnourished, firsly for actual food nutrients, but also some pretty basic human needs, and some pretty serious contexts that are missing.

• And we have addictive compulsions that make us keep hunting for the parts, not the whole. The parts that never gets satisfied, because the body/soul is practically starving, and constantly craving.

• And we have a nation that is also addicted to substances, and addicted to wanking off on its own ideas of how to heal from the hellscape that it created for itself.

Yay.

Ok. Ok. I promise I will connect all the dots and put a cherry on top, in the second part of this post. Meanwhile just enjoy the fact that I (a brown middle-aged woman) just told you you cannot possibly know that the sky can actually be blue, that this smog-grey is not “blue” no matter how hard you squint and tell me that it is, and that your parents may have mutilated you preverbally if you are a male, and emotionally if you are a female, and it is not their fault because it was done to them too… and that what you call a potato is not actually a potato.

Gee, I wonder if you would come back for part II.