dysfunction Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Photo: L. Weikel

Gentleness

It’s been two hours since the debacle ended. My pulse is only now returning to some semblance of a slow and steady beat. And the only thing I can think to write about is gentleness.

What we witnessed tonight is part of the shit-show I suspected would unfold this week. Oh goody – I can’t wait for the moon to become full on Thursday. What lunacy could possibly unfold? I’m sure we’ll find out.

Trauma

Why do I feel gentleness – the main attribute of Deer, which came calling on me every afternoon the past few days – is the watchword for this evening’s post? Because I defy anyone who watched what was billed as a presidential debate (but was never in actuality anything even remotely resembling a debate) to tell me they did not feel battered and traumatized by the disgustingly rude and disrespectful behavior of DT this evening.

As a nation, as humans watching all over the world, quite frankly, we were brutalized. What we witnessed was the unfiltered and unflinching behavior of someone who has never been held to account for himself in his entire life. We witnessed the quintessential bully. While his words and actions may have titillated a small segment of the world – those who are as damaged as he is – I have enough belief in humanity to know that the vast majority of us reject this. He does not speak for us.

And we must mobilize to ensure his deranged tactics are no longer a threat to either our fellow United States citizens or the billions of people with whom we share this planet. We must shift and transmute the energy – the rage, the trauma, the terror – that his behavior is deliberately calculated to trigger within us all into a resolute determination to leave these old ways of trauma-informed tactics behind.

First Take Care of Ourselves

In order to make strides in shifting and transmuting these energies we much first take care of ourselves. And this is where the lesson of Deer comes in. It is essential that we disengage and remember who we are. Walk away from the clips that perpetuate DT’s brutish derision of our system and his opponent, as well as his outrageous lies.

Take a bath, walk in the woods, take ten minutes and just stand outside and look up into the sky. Get ready to greet a new month arriving with the full moon on Thursday.

Deer in the Medicine Cards* (by Jamie Sams and David Carson) entreats us to treat the insane bully with gentleness and loving kindness. In a sense, it will short-circuit him. Don’t argue. Pity him. Make a point of disengaging when the pressure becomes too intense.

Eat some hostas.

Chill Out – these hostas are delicious – Photo: L. Weikel

*Affiliate link

(T-423)

Early Night

I’m tired. I’m going to try to wrest an early night out of this Saturday evening.

The weather today was a classic August day: quite exquisite, if just a scootch on the warm and muggy side.

Karl and I took a short jaunt to the banks of the Tohickon Creek late this afternoon. We sat on rocks jutting out into the creek, dangling our feet in waters swollen by the torrents of rain that lashed our area late Thursday evening. The cooling comfort of the creek’s steady stream was a perfect complement to the pleasure of losing ourselves in our books.

As Karl approaches his birthday, he was delighted to recently discover an author whose work he can totally immerse himself in. (Double bonus for me – since now I know something he’ll love that I can get him for his birthday.)

Needed to Read

While I’m savoring the last few chapters of a novel, Ninth House,* dubbed as fantasy (but which actually feels more real-life than most would think…), I have to admit I fell down the rabbit hole and interrupted my ‘fantasy’ novel with Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough*.

Because I am fascinated by what feels like an eternal quest to understand why people are the way they are and do what do, I’ll admit it: reading the stories in this book does shed some light on the forces that shaped our current president. His background is terribly sad in its own way. But as bad as the treatment may have been, it’s pretty obvious that the tendencies to react in the bizarrely cruel ways he did to his childhood were there from the very beginning.

I guess I’m saying that, approximately halfway through the book, I feel compassion for his dysfunction. But I’m also, at the same time, appalled that he was permitted to, as the author says, ‘fail up.’ Repeatedly. And continues to have his glaring inadequacies covered up or explained away or simply glossed over, all the while people, including children at the border, are literally paying for that dysfunction with their lives.

It’s funny; I sort of feel as though it’s my responsibility to at least try to understand him. Perhaps it’s a form of self-preservation. If we can somehow figure out his endgame, maybe we can somehow avoid the horrific ending to this debacle that’s barreling toward us.

But I’m sensing that’s not going to be achievable no matter how well we understand him. And that is terrifying.

Enjoy the beauty that surrounded us as we read.