Being a Witness to History
"The Party told you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." ~ George Orwell
Between May 17 and November 15th, 1973, I watched my mom watch the Senate Watergate hearings. On the outside, I may have seemed annoyed that I couldn't view my usual cartoons after school, especially because we only had one television before my dad came home and claimed it for sports - one portal to the vision of what the world was becoming. But on the inside, something felt at ease with my mom rushing home from her part-time job to be with me. The truth was, I felt lonely, and in the loneliness I felt unsafe.
An immigrant who had just finished her GED at night school while caring for our family, my mom was intent on understanding what was happening in the government, especially after voting for Nixon for his promise of "peace with honor". Coming from the violence of a Greek Civil War, she longed for safety too.
Still, her dedication made no sense to me. I remember asking her why she couldn't just catch the news recap. And, with loving intensity, she said, "Because I have to see it with my eyes, hear it with my ears, and feel it in my heart."
Of course, little ol' me at seven didn't understand this at the time. Yet, something deep inside—a presence, a wisdom, a remembrance—recognized the truth of her words and kept it tucked away until this moment.
Now, before I go into what I've learned or why it's important, I must confess something. I spent the majority of my life focused on becoming me, absent from political discourse, fighting against the ideas of what others thought I should be. I tried to be the best mom I could be to my sons, and seeking freedom in all that 'is' is, was quite difficult and cruel at times.
With that in mind, there is so much I didn't know, and so much I still don't know. However, what I do understand is that the humility of not knowing will deliver these words to the space where knowingness arises, so that we can rise together.
Our Nation is being groomed, managed, and manipulated in ways that demand our critical attention. Recognizing this is central to my story.
This awakening has not been easy, for, in the course of doing so, this body has been re-traumatized with actions aimed at suppressing and distorting memories of the abuse of power OVER my body, while oppressing the actions that would deliver me INTO the arms of love.
To truly be awake—to be present and in control of my free will—I had to take a ride through this hateful, often terrorizing narrative. Then disengage from the divisive headlines and degraded accounts in order to watch the unedited, unscripted C-SPAN Senate hearings in their entirety—Pam Bondi & the Epstein Files, Jack Smith & the Insurrection of January 6th, Kristi Noem & the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Goode... and the lot.
At first, my body and mind were overwhelmed—fearful memories surged, emotions returned, and action felt impossible.
But when I saw it with my own eyes—when I heard the deflection and recognized the posture and tone of apathy—I smelled a lie, and when the unedited violent images demanded a voice—something inside shifted.
I couldn't run away from it; I couldn't explain it; I had to stay with what was rising, for, as we have learned, struggling against it would only strengthen its hold on me and deepen the struggle between what I feared and what I desired.
"In the very act of that attention, the struggle came to an end" (Krishnamurti).
This marked the beginning of a change. I was called to speak on behalf of Love.
Everything I've trained for in this lifetime makes it clear to me. I recognize subversive marketing strategies that spread falsehoods. I understand the playbook of tyranny and imperialist rhetoric designed to enslave us in fear, and I have been educated in the anatomy of thought that makes it clear to me: We must stay alert and skeptical to resist manipulation, while sharpening our focus and skills of discernment to remain free from this struggle.
This is the core of my argument, the cause of this swelling anger inside, crying out for justice.
We must remember that anger in the present is a sign of injustice. When we ignore this anger and fail to follow the thread to the patterns of history calling for our awakening, it swells into acts of self-righteous indignation that distort our sense of humanity.
As a result, I see how this weakness is being managed (by controlling education, media, and religion), mined (with our personal data), and manipulated (algorithms supportive of fearful and hateful narratives) at an accelerated rate, and without any guardrails, we will become lost in a world filled with fear, worry, and ignorance.
For it is in the vehicle of education that our identity and history are stored, through media that news and messaging are shared, and in religion that moral hierarchy and divine right are authored.
“You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Most of my personal experience lies within the circumstances of the gender I was born into and within the patriarchal, religious, and cultural roles that have shaped my duties and expectations. I do not know what it feels like to navigate through a man's world as a white, Christian Nationalist man, only the duties that have taxed my attempts at freedom within these constructs. These roles often demand that I give unquestioning allegiance to the desires of others—mostly hierarchical, patriarchal thought systems—blind loyalty without alignment to the truth of my personal experience, confidence without unconditional love for reality, and the risk of abandoning the very senses and bonds that help me navigate this world.
So let's be clear: this kind of authoritarianism stifles the mind. Religious, political, and cultural beliefs that dismiss dignity and our sense of humanity "destroy the discovery of reality" (Krishnamurti). We come to depend on this authority when we're afraid to stand alone in recognizing that it is wrong, corrupt, inhuman, and unloving to harm another with our reasons. When we ignore the truth, we disconnect from wisdom. This happens because we choose authorities to avoid the suffering I've shared. Any action or belief that helps us bypass reality also bypasses our wisdom.
And so, it is the process of self-understanding that guides us back to wisdom - to the timeless essence that informs our words and actions.
For desire without agreement, loyalty without friendship, and love without clarity is living in a world disconnected from God's Code - love thy neighbor as you would love God. We've been here before, staring into the abyss of beliefs that have made hate real, but the reality of hate is that it only exists when fear is present.
Who is stoking your fear, and how is it affecting your ability to see the truth?
Spiritual bypassing is the act of using teachings to avoid the relational reality of our beliefs. It's a gaslighting strategy that uses absolute truth to diminish the value of experiences arising from the relationship between our thoughts and the reality of the world those thoughts shape.
It is a form of apathy, which, in my experience, is much more damaging than fear or hate. When we create systems of belief that distort reality and surround ourselves with people who operate those systems to make those realities true, that becomes real, true beyond the senses. The senses are what make us human, and the body (as in the body of Christ) is what keeps us close to God, to the body of life within which we exist.
As Joe Dispenza points out, "your thoughts can change your biology. Those thoughts, when left unchecked, offer a short-term fix. But in the long run, this survival strategy only increases the disconnect. It pulls us away from the attention and discernment necessary to survive. The body falls out of balance and out of order, losing touch with the resources of discernment that ensure our survival."
The rush created by that arousal is highly addictive, and we start to depend on the bad stuff to keep the adrenaline going, to keep us feeling like we are doing something; we "become addicted to a life you don't even like" (Dispenza). To break the addiction is to stop the body from being the mind of that addiction.
Which brings us to an empowering understanding: If your thoughts can make you sick, your thoughts can make you well.
"I dreamt a dream that I was ill;
I woke and laughed to find me still
Bedewed with tears,
But tears of joy, not sadness:
To find I had dreamt of sickness
For I am whole, I am whole." ~Yogananda