Living with Open Hands (4.0) (Resonant Voices)

  Religious Trauma Syndrome by Marlene Winell https://journeyfree.org/  Part 1: RTS - It's Time To Recognize It Part 2: Understanding RTS - Trauma From Religion Part 3: The Trauma of Leaving Religion https://broadview.org/former-fundamentalists-describe-the-trauma-of-leaving-their-faith/ Religious Trauma Syndrome is the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination. They may be going through the shattering of a personally meaningful faith and/or breaking away from a controlling community and lifestyle.  RTS is a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion and the impact of severing one’s connection with one’s faith.  It can be compared to a combination of PTSD  and  Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). This is a summary followed by a series of  three articles  which were published in  Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Today . Religious Trauma Syndrome ...

"Thought creates the world and then says, 'I didn't do it'. (David Bohm) “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” (Carl Jung) Here's more about conditioning from Krishnamurti: "All thinking obviously is conditioned; there is no such thing as free thinking. Thinking can never be free, it is the outcome of our conditioning, of our background, of our culture, of our climate, of our social, economic, political background. The very books that you read and the very practices that you do are all established in the background, and any thinking must be the result of that background. So if we can be aware—and we can go presently into what it signifies, what it means, to be aware—perhaps we shall be able to uncondition the mind without the process of will, without the determination to uncondition the mind. Because the moment you determine, there is an entity who wishes, an entity who says, “I must uncondition my mi...

 Since its inception, the founding fathers have stressed the importance of keeping the affairs of the church separate from the affairs of the state. Without this we risk one usurping the other thereby tainting the purity of both. “Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.” ― Robert A. Heinlein “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. [Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]” ― James Madison “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext ar...

HEARTBREAK is unpreventable; the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control, of holding in our affections those who inevitably move beyond our line of sight. Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is our indication of sincerity: in a love relationship, in a work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is just as much an essence and emblem of care as the spiritual athlete’s quick but abstract ability to let go. Heartbreak has its own way of inhabiting time and its own beautiful and trying patience in coming and going. Heartbreak is inescapable; yet we use the word as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an un...

Great Questions: Writings of Judith Snow "I have lived on the margins & fought hard to become a participating citizen. I am a thinker & a dreamer. I have a reputation as a visionary. Let’s look at what fosters community capable of including people in all the diversity of their gifts & dreams." http://www.inclusion.com/booksJudithSnow.html Beautiful Questions John O’Donnohue used to talk about how you shaped a more beautiful mind and that it’s an actual discipline, no matter what circumstances you’re in. The way I interpreted it was the discipline of asking beautiful questions and that a beautiful question shapes a beautiful mind. The ability to ask beautiful questions, often, in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it as it does by having it answered. You don’t have to do anything about it. You just have to keep asking, and before you know it, you will f...

  Judith Snow’s Gifts List by  Judith Snow  on July 1, 2010 Notes on the Gifts and Assets That People Who Are Vulnerable to Rejection Commonly Bring to Community by Judith Snow Hospitality making people feel happy listening Grounding slowing people down, reorienting people to time and place leading people to appreciate simple things causing people to appreciate their own abilities Skill Building pushing people to be better problem solvers causing people to try things they’ve never done before causing people to research things they never encountered before improving education improving technology modeling perseverance – being unstoppable Networking reaching out to people and breaking down barriers asking questions that everyone else is too shy to ask bringing people together who otherwise would never meet The Economy providing jobs to people who want supplemental income, like artists providing jobs to people who need to work odd schedules like homemakers providing jobs to ...

  What’s left? Unshakable Conviction that Life itself is Holy Richard Rohr The view from the edge of life is different and often much clearer than the way most of us see things. Life-threatening illness may cause people to question what they have accepted as unchanging. Values that have been passed down in a family for generations may be recognized as inadequate; lifelong beliefs about personal capacities or what is important may prove to be mistaken. When life is stripped down to its very essentials, it is surprising how simple things become. Fewer and fewer things matter and those that matter, matter a great deal more. As a doctor to people with cancer, I have walked the beach at the edge of life picking up this wisdom like shells. One of my patients who survived three major surgeries in five weeks described himself as “born again.” When I asked him about this, he told me that his experience had challenged all of his ideas about life. Everything he had thought true had turned out...