Category: Articles

I have wanted to work for an elite professional, but what I am finding is that I keep putting constrictions upon myself, knowing that where they are, they cannot even burp without someone having an opinion.

The stress and pressure they are under is likely immense, and I have wanted to be there as a friend and professional in ways to help with this.

But, is the trade off that I cannot be me – pure and honestly?

Media hype has been allowed to become overbloated in unreasonable expectations that people we idolize must meet standards of “perfection.”

To give extreme examples, a person is not considered “good and pure” if they have sensual needs and desires.

A person is not acknowledged as having solid morality if they would never intentionally hurt anybody, but enjoy wit and company of people involved with more extreme scenes (consent on all levels being the key).

What if someone is curious about their own identity and depths of capabilities regarding “vanilla” to “extreme” – in anything from sky diving to what are usually societaly considered “unmentionable” things?

Clearly, there are “wrong” things, like rape, murder, pedophilia. Yet, how is buying up real estate and raising rents so people cannot afford to live less incarceration worthy?

Without going further, the question is about “being allowed” genuine self expression.

I think there should be a “pass” phase where people can wear a pin or something that identifies – with respect and societal acceptance – that they are Exploring.

Something that surely I have deserved after a lifetime of varied degrees of others’ imposed torments negatively affecting and impinging.

Give me room and space, without judgement, to kick loose and just be – without worrying someone will use this time negatively against me and blemish my resume.

We ought to just accept each other as the diversely-expressive humans we are, capable of honor in collaborations while being unabashedly “unfinished.”

The Human Experience is one capable of constant growth and learning. We came here as spirit form into the material to experience such things.

We should back off from so much expectation, and instead learn to listen better, know ourselves more truly, and come clean with our wants and needs.

I am a Fantastic human being.

I am not perfect – though I have ascribed to be.

But, the efforts to be perfect just aren’t paying out, and I need to take care of my needs.

Alone and perfect vs. thriving and imperfect.

Here’s the crux of choosing one’s “authenticity.”

Whether “God” exists or not is not the subject of this moment’s consideration.

The concept I’m pondering is about whether or not humans need a conceptual structure to be good humans.

If there is a God, this means there is something “Greater” than us. If we are to believe scriptures are “His” laws, our duty is to follow them.

Ah! There are so many avenues to travel in discussing and exploring such related aspects!

Having a God creates a psychological box, within which humans are contained.

Only God dictates who comes and goes, and we are not allowed to question. Certainly, we can expect little in direct guidance and/or answers.

I know we can then discuss the merits of prayer, meditation, and “listening for that quiet, inner voice answering inside you…”

But, at some point, great minds push against the threshold of perceived barriers.

Consider exploration of the physics “String Theories.”

We could say these discoveries may, in fact, prove the existence of God – or at least indicate some level of innate, interactive intelligence governing everything in the background of matter and energy.

Fascinating! and Exciting!

But, what I want to know is can the human mind self-govern well and healthily without the God construct?

At times, my mind feels so isolated while gazing at the night sky as the stars just keep expanding their numbers into farther and farther galaxy universes.

What a terrifying thrill to think of folding the “fabric” of time and space and journeying through wormholes to other existences!

But, in all of this, does God truly exist?

And are we as humans merely captives in His all-encompassing petri dish?

Or are we, with our evolving intelligence, meant to outgrow the need for a parent?

Are we meant to take the guidance given, and to expand upon this into becoming an even greater species – beyond that which God, itself, could even imagine?

I pose that God must hope for this, given our adaptive capabilities interwoven in our genetics.

I think we are able to overcome our base limitations to become more than we’ve originally translated.

i think the answers are there in the scriptures by what is not being said, but that in reading leads the mind to quest for by its absence.

And if you observe and listen closely, it isn’t “God” stopping us or plaguing us in our attempts to improve ourselves.

It’s other humans, and what their agendas impose on us.

I think it’s a sign of the times that Humanity is ready to expand beyond previous capabilities.

Conservatives are lock-stepped into the “old ways” – and we see whenever they try to stage a seige that their ways mainly bring repression and/or violence.

I agree that laws stating what we can and cannot say must be carefully weighed – and I don’t know what better solution exists than forcing us all by law to use an individual’s preferred pronouns to ensure society acknowledges LGBTQ+ communities as deserving of respect, equality, and safety.

But it must be a Law of Common Decency and Understanding that violence, hate crimes, and subjugated segregation are not acceptable dictates – for any reason.

Abuse cannot be allowed to be a law unto itself, and victims and casualties of such injustices deserve their Human Rights.

Alternative Communities have important insights and creative innovation to gift us with – if we bigots would just get out of their way.

Listen up!

Humans are an odd bunch of proclivities.

Many of us get bored easily – probably because our natural connections to life’s systems are constantly being displaced and replaced by what’s transitory.

Therefore, many of us have relatively-short attention spans and crave intellectual stimulation that’s unique.

We’ve experienced “odd” and “uncool” things happening – either to us personally, or to others and things around us that we’ve seen.

As a result, we are often reexamining and questioning – sometimes completely changing – our identities.

Without structure we can consistently identify with, we are left to create our own ways of expressing who we are and what we think and feel as we seek to establish internal congruency.

Therefore, whatever color or creed, behavior or need, DO NO HARM is the baseline policy.

Let’s move the egos out of our way and get down to planning and co-creating.

We have a World to Save, people!

As a result, we’ll redeem Humanity.

We can say that age is just a number until we reach that number where we look back and see how much we have, or haven’t grown.

Age, in its own way, is a potential maturity marker. It’s a place-in-time keeper, a pausing retrospective analysis of what we have accomplished, what we are currently capable of, and of how far we still have yet to go in being able to tackle and grapple with life’s challenges.

Having been engaged to a man twenty years younger than me, I can tell you from my experience that when life got hard in our waiting to be married over three years, my already acquired life skills served me well to keep enduring and innovating to nourish our connection.

However, my beloved’s “inexperience” put him in a vulnerable position subject to pressure’s influences from family, society, and inability to affect his side of the equation. He was rendered powerless by forces bent on keeping him from advancing.

When I could finally visit him during a release in the pandemic’s lockdown, he had lost too much weight and was extremely unwell from the longterm stress he’d been under. He needed to break off our engagement so he could start a new life for himself, instead of waiting for further unknown time when the embassy for approving our K-1 would reopen.

(Thousands of couples around the world have been faced with such a decision.)

As much as losing him has crushed me and I have struggled toward recovery, if continuing to wait was harming my love, I had to set him free. Life makes no sense sometimes, and simetimes we just have to go another course than we want to – even if saying goodbye is filled with the deepest sense of loss and regret.

I generally do not agree with this type of philosophy. In fact, I stay until the game is won in mutual favor of triumphant positivity! But, not many people are built to endure and overcome such trials like I’ve become by time’s experience.

If my fiance had had a few more years of having toughed life out while succeeding in overcoming barriers before we met, I believe this would have gifted us with a better outcome (and COVID affecting the entire world made things farther beyond difficult).

In this respect, age is not just a number. It can present limitations, and it can challenge one’s abilities. Yet, it should not be the final word on any matter. There are younger people who have such strength of will and determination in their purpose that they see everything as just a riddle to unlock next levels for advancement.

It takes a certain flex in environment, clarity of mind, willingness of heart, and strong belief system for a person of any age to overcome such obstacles that life presents to us.

What is justice?

Some can say it is a validated form of revenge. But, I think in its true sense, the act of justice is an attempt to correct wrongs when others have broken rules or laws. It is an attempt to hold accountable those who avoid responsible use of power, and then corrupt power, causing harm.

Justice is an attempt to “put things right” again. It serves as a corrective “conscience” when others do not have one, or refuse to respond to it.

I’ve witnessed many “injustices,” yet, while I’ve seen the damage (even if onto myself), if it seemed better to walk away to avoid more damage and incur conflict, then I would do this.

A simple law of survival is do not expend resources you can’t afford to lose, and if you have already lost such resources, move away from the source of harm to rebuild again.

But, having come into a situation where harm has been done to me, then more harm to me after that – and knowing that harm was done to others long before me, and more harm to others will continue after me if all remains the same – I have been put in the rare position to actually change any of this.

I know enough from having been behind the scenes to realize the “perpetrator” is more than guilty: he willfully indulges in actions that benefit himself, but harms others. And, I know he has broken codes of ethics in business and healthcare, sacrificing other people’s livelihoods to strengthen his own position while putting his clients’ and his staff’s health at risk.

If I say nothing on my behalf and the behalf of others, harm will be allowed to continue, and no one else will present the whole picture as I’ve been afforded view.

The person may receive a fine here or there, but will always be able to keep avoiding accountability. He will not be forced to treat people more humanely, nor protect them properly with the power he’s been given. He will not be forced to take responsibility for the position he holds as a leader, nor have any incentive to further grow.

For a society to thrive productively, we must follow the laws that keep us from base brutality. And having expectations put on me by the Society of Healthcare Professionals, it is to be expected that all who participate in such system should uphold the same moralities and not be allowed to distort its laws to validate any harm they’re enacting.

Each system in any aspect of any society (from the righteous and pious to the obscene and extreme) has its own rules and expectations. If a person will not follow these dictates while participating and gaining from such system, they must either abdicate their position and withdraw any claims, and/or pay penalties and amend their behaviors.

Cyberbullying affected both of my children when they were in grades elementary to high school.

The ability for students to post videos and make public comments “outing” other children and defaming their reputation (with or without real data) spreads rapidly through the internet like wildfire, and there is no immediate check system put in place to stop this, nor any real consequences.

By the time parents and any authorities were contacted, damage to my children’s social status was already done, and there were no reparations required to be made publicly. This caused embarrassment and humiliation that could not be overcome within the educational system.

I chose to transfer my children to independent studies and charter schools, then supported both of their testing out of high school to give them a chance to start over again by entering city college early, where they could hope to engage in a more mature environment where cyberbullying was cause for expulsion.

This, however, did rob my children of connecting with peers their age and finishing with their high school diplomas. They also struggled with social anxiety for many years because their having to leave public school made them feel like societal outcasts.

The rush of damaging other people’s reputations can make youth feel powerful, and the behavior becomes addictive. It isn’t just about being popular, but that other people’s lives can be destroyed by callous internet photos, videos, innuendos, and statements.

When I was a child, bullying was terrible – true. But, we had the advantage of it taking time for rumor and innuendo to circulate; we had a chance to counteract it, personally, more effectively because hearsay was based upon word-of-mouth and personally-direct interactions.

These days, you can blink – and your reputation is suddenly ruined: once someone soils it, there is almost no way to regain your good name and status as people’s interest in sensationalism propagates misinformation.

How do we stop cyberbullying? Certainly, it is necessary to create a culture that speaks out against it, no longer allows such behavior to have weight in argument, and has instant consequences against those people who thrive on and support it.

But, more importantly, we need to again cultivate good social values of inclusivity, teaching that nurturing and supporting one another is the best way to have a safe and positively-productive society. If a mistake is made, equal (if not more so) efforts must be made to personally and publicly apologize.

After all, cyberbullying is more of a symptom, than a cause: we’ve just been distracted by its actions and results into labeling it as the culprit. When we again value personal accountability and treating one another with respect and honor, cyberbullying will be an experience of the past – because it’s no longer an option.

There are misconceptions we all travel through life under, one of them being our concept about partnership and marriage.

Without going into the details of all those beliefs and fantasies – ideals we’ve been fed through Ken and Barbie, TV, and generations of observing some marriages work, but many don’t – I want to talk about a phenomena I’ve noticed. There is something that occurs when we go from dating to partnership, from being unmarried and courting to married.

People talk about “the honeymoon period” that happens when we first get together with a partner, and a brief period of time right after being married, where things seem to go very well between the couple – and then the relationship enters a downward slide that over the years never seems to recover as pressures such as children, work, finances, division of tasks, challenges to values, influences from extended family and friends, and societal trends bombard our senses.

Critics who stay single and “available” judge, laugh, and put pressure on struggling couples, encouraging their friends-in-distress to return to “playing the field,” maybe have an affair (a very few mention counseling) – and there’s always the option of divorce, which is now the most popular rip-off-the-scab-and-apply-bandaid, “rinse-and-repeat” approach to dreams of a life fulfilled gone awry.

But, let’s back it up here a minute: let’s go all the way back to the beginning, before everything became a mess and entangled.

I’d like to talk about a phenomenon I’ve noticed: one so subtly stealthy that we all fall into its trap without knowing it. There is a kind of psychological shift that happens when we go from being single to partnered – but especially from unmarried to married.

How do I explain this? Let’s see…it’s like leaving a phase from where we are blissfully unaware and in denial to suddenly entering a preset construct: a forum, like in virtual reality, where pressures we’ve held in check our entire lives suddenly release and must be accounted for. Only this isn’t VR – this is real life – and “Hell” must be addressed and paid if we wish to get to Heaven.

Think about about all of the messaging you’ve heard about marriage, what it means and “should and shouldn’t do’s” you’ve ingested. Think about what you’ve been taught marriage means “In the Eyes of God;” think about what the priests of the church expect from you. Think about all of the arguments your parents had with each other, where they were able to function together – and where they couldn’t.

Think about relationships you saw all around you, what you fantasized about, the ideals you held – and if you saw any examples of these actually functioning and flourishing in your reality. Remember if you ever experienced bullying or abuse, unfairness, criticism, injustice – remember how small you felt then. Think about how you wished you could get even, or were or were not protected. Think about times you felt safe – and when you wanted to run away.

How did you address or cope with any of these experiences and messaging while you grew up? My guess is that you “did the best you could under the circumstances” while being a child and developing adult, most likely without proper support and direction. So here you are now, partially finished and cobbled together at best, locked and loaded with tension waiting to explode, needing to deal with all of these issues as you enter and gain new maturity.

Now that you’ve found someone you would like to partner with and are committed to walking through the door into matrimony, as you open that door, all that past life experience saunters right into the relationship with you. It’s like an ignored child that needs attention and is starving because it hasn’t been fed any food. It’s like a roommate you did not invite – in fact, one ready and willing to trash your home or apartment just because he/she’s an adult now and “has the right to.”

But do you know why all this past internally-suppressed behavior suddenly comes forward? It’s because you now have another person there, every day, to reflect upon and interact with – who by default of close proximity and our need for connection and bonding with another person becomes your mirror. And hey, they promised to “love and cherish you, forever,” right? So they’ve got buy-in. They’re supposed to “be here for you, no matter what.” Now, “the real fun begins.”

The way we look at marriage is terribly skewed. We come into it with all of these external and internally superimposed expectations that marriage will fix everything that’s been wrong in our lives and elevate us to a higher status and better quality of living.

We don’t enter into marriage looking for a partner willing to collaborate with us to overcome our deepest fears, to help create trust where little exists, to consciously bear witness to our internal demons and help support us as we do the work needed to overcome them. We don’t go into marriage for the real opportunity that marriage represents: healing and deep bonding. Yet, we get slammed by the force of all these past issues emerging into the relationship, once we’ve found someone we want to commit to.

We can run from these truths, but we cannot hide: they will creep through the seams into our daily lives, no matter how many layers of sugar coating we try to cover them with.

That past unease, unrest, and dissatisfaction will – eventually – permeate everything we want to protect from it simply because it is there as a continuously held negative charge and puts pressure on us subconsciously while we deal with accumulating daily challenges, consciously. To prevent damaging our partnership, we must address these preexisting issues from the very beginning as a part of the blueprint-to-success for our marriages.

This brings to mind how flawed our partner-seeking qualifications are. We are taught to go for attraction, money, and external opportunities. While these are important, they can each be achieved over time to some degree – even if they are not initially present. The key ingredient we are never taught to look for – but that is the crux upon which many successful marriages depend – is compatibility in communication, and whether or not our partner truly likes us, has a compatible belief system to ours, and wants bonding connection with us. This is where we find the real “buy-in.”

If we have these core ingredients of communication and regard’s affection, then the matrix of our marital relationship becomes ours to design to our mutual, collaborative satisfaction.

Most everyone has something attractive about their body and personality: these aspects can be focused upon and enhanced by paying attention to them and building upon them. If we invest in education, strategy, and responding to good timing, we can gain financial success. As we focus on making real progress by putting in real work and applying conscious awareness, we place ourselves in better circumstances. Over time, our productive efforts yield results we learn from, improve upon, and that bring us more opportunities.

So again, let’s take it back to the basics.

Know that marriage is not what we’ve come to believe it to be, but that many of the things we’ve heard it ought to be can be prospectively achieved if we recognize its true opportunity: it is the chance to enter into a forum with an equally invested partner and do “the dirty work” it takes for us to become better humans.

As part of my writing and love of working with words, I will often look up concepts and phrases that come to me from past memory, or that I’ve heard recently, in order to assess relative accuracy of traditional vs currently applied meaning.

Today, one of those terms was “honeypotting” because I remembered how it was mirthfully used in the movie, The Interview, featuring actors James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Randall Park, where two journalists are hired by the CIA to assassinate the Korean dictator, Kim John-un, while giving him an interview.

Watching this comedy first introduced me to the concept of honeypotting. (Spoiler Alert) Dave Skylark, the main journalist, gets lured into helping the CIA by Lacey, a female agent who dresses, behaves in ways, and wears glasses to match his type of attraction in order to gain his desire to help the agency. Later in the film, Skylark is lured into feeling he is best buddies with the North Korean dictator who shares with him the fun of firing a tank, singing to Katy Perry’s music together, and even gifts him with a puppy.

The term honeypotting is used to describe these key moments of comedic impact that were fun and witty, so I wanted to be sure I would be using the term properly before I shared a joke using the word with a dear friend.

As I began my normally blissfully-curious internet search for engaging life’s meaning, I found this article, Honeypotting is the new technique to catch a cheater | Daily Mail – and felt an immediate sense of outrage.

The term honeypotting in the article noted above currently defines the word as when “clients” now hire “detectives” whose job it is to attempt to lure the client’s significant other into having an affair. It is a deviously methodical attempt to test a supposed loved one by temptation’s persuasion to see if they are “strong enough” or “true enough” to resist having the affair – thus proving or disproving fealty to the couple’s relationship.

I feel that there’s a natural order and flow to a human life’s energy, right timing, etc., that may affect who we meet in our lives, when, and where – including circumstances we somehow find ourselves in – for worse or for better. Human instincts have been evolving over millennia, honed to observe and track social cues and trends to ensure our survival as a species.

Our brain and body receptors are highly tuned into picking up vast streams of perceptual data that we are not always aware of: our instincts sense the ebb and flow of this data which results in the ability to recognize patterns – much like how we perceive the weather getting warmer when spring is coming – except on more subtle levels. Our subconscious perception of this data will, at times, trigger us to consciously notice environmental factors as they shift, or when opportunities for self advancement appear suddenly out of the blue. Our systems are designed to hit us with a jolt of “pay attention” to ensure maximum success in survival strategies.

Add to this the hypothesis posed by such New Age concepts as The Law of Attraction promoting the idea that as we change our attention and focus, different sets of opportunities and circumstances then seem to be drawn toward us because we shift the conscious paths we are taking into a state where we are receptive for alternative beneficience that we’d like to achieve. Whether or not humans have an energetic connection to “cosmic energy” and that we can “tap into unlimited abundance” is something that remains to be seen by intensive, over time proven trial and error results. The relevant component is that as humans shift what we focus on in our lives, our subconscious shifts what it pays attention to and brings to our awareness.

The point I am trying to make here is that human consciousness has a sense on some level at all times of where we are in our lives relative to the lives of others around us, and it knows if something rare or unusual comes into the scene. We are wired to pick up and interpret this information as “danger” or “opportunity.” The more intense either messaging, the more extreme we are prompted by brain and body processes to react. Corporations and social media have designed their target marketing to access and manipulate subconscious responses. By using data gathered about us over time, they’ve developed ways to attract our interests to gain ratings and buy products.

I believe that when you artificially insert a honeypotter – a person of magnetic attraction designed by clothing, looks, and behavior to grab the attention of our subconscious data receptors – outside the normal sequencing flow of a person’s life patterning, the “target” is triggered more powerfully than they would normally be to “pay attention and react” than had they met such a person through natural life circumstances.

When something is “out of the norm,” the signal we receive to pay attention can be triggered to blare even louder to cause us to have an incredibly powerful reaction – which is actually our system trying to warn us of a type of “danger” – but because honeypotters are guised to overly appeal to our senses, the “danger” they pose is hidden by “attractiveness.” This is called misattribution of arrousal, where the physical response to danger is misperceived as a “thrill of excitement” in response to the honeypotter.

The honeypotter’s highly calculated sensual overstimulation presentation causes the “danger” signal to become confused and misdirected while manipulated inhibitions fall prey to suddenly making us feel out of control of our emotions as hormones ramp into now exacerbated responses. This effect can hijack a person’s normal internal stability, causing inability to respond with control and/or to experience a lapse in judgement.

Honeypotters, like corporations and social media, know exactly what they’re doing when they use strategies to tap into our hindbrain reactions and hormonal responses to manipulate us into irregular behavior: It’s their job.

The type of responses they initiate in us are what we’d feel naturally when we come across someone that we are prospectively “designed” to recognize as a possible mate to bond with. The human body realizes the honeypotter’s placement in our life’s time continuum is out of the norm – but because of the intensity of reactions through the art of crafted seduction, our systems respond poorly to increased pressure.

It could also be argued that if a client hires a honeypotter, their relationship with their significant other has been having issues to begin with. This sense of mistrust and needing to find out if their partner can be basically entrapped into adultery may be based upon imbalance in the relationship, and placing such pressure on their partner may push the “victim” into thinking and feeling, “You know what? Maybe I do need an escape!”

Furthermore, do we really think that if a honeypotter were able to get our partner to commit “untoward acts” that once our partner realizes they’ve been deceived, they’ll come crawling to the negotiating table with their arms open wide and beg for forgiveness? Why would any self-respecting person wish to reconcile after such actions from someone they’re supposed to be able to trust – but who, instead, set them up and did not initiate open, honest, and direct communication?

Who, at this point, is really to blame for the victim’s indiscretions? Methinks that it’s the untrusting partner – and the honeypotter, who carries no blame for their own actions under the guise of following their “job description.”