What I’ve learned from Lev

    If you haven’t heard of Lev Parnas yet, then I suggest you watch this brief clip from Brian Williams 11th Hour MSNBC program (aired Friday, Jan 17, 2020.)

Why does Lev matter? He’s providing a roadmap to many “high crimes” and who is caught up in them.  People didn’t want to believe Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen after he was arrested either, but these guys were “insiders” and truly know where all the dirt and skeletons reside.

We were hearing about Rudy Guiliani and his associates “Lev & Igor” on MSNBC last fall before their October arrests.  And, a New York crime reporter reminds us:

  • Fox TV host Sean Hannity was Michael Cohen’s “Client 3.” (#1 was Trump and #2 was Elliott Broidy, an RNC finance chair.)
  • Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman claimed they had traveled to Vienna (before their arrest) to assist with Hannity’s interview with Ukrainian ex-prosecutor Viktor Shokin. 

Important because Trump World tries to discredit people who were once key figures.  Continue reading

#grappling

(quote originally from Jenni @SimpleReminders)  It’s a good one.

Christians may disagree, claiming a Savior is the answer, but Buddha’s enlightenment was that we control our minds and stabilize our practice of beneficial behavior. Only then can we avoid the whip-saw of destructive emotions.

I know this, so why am I still grappling and “hate tweeting”? Like all addictions, habits are extremely difficult to change, even when we know they are harming us and others. Continue reading

Peace? Where… when?

Let’s begin with this extremely distressing, but very moving brief clip…

 

I grew up in the Midwest when America was still proud to be a melting pot of immigrants. We weren’t taught to hate or discriminate. I was wide-eyed and hopeful just like little Rachel in this video. I had friends who went to the Peace Corps and I became a journalist. We were all working for Peace and Truth in our own way…  believing if people had facts they would do the right thing.

What an eye-opening journey this life has been. I’m over 60 now and things seem so much worse than I could have imagined. I was sure that after JFK, RFK & MLK were killed, after Watergate, and after the long, horrifying Vietnam war ended, surely there would be peace in the world, or at least here in America. But no. The never-ending conflict in the Middle East raged on and the USA was in the thick of it.  Continue reading

#JOMO

Even though Psychology Today wrote about the “Joy of Missing Out” back in July,  I learned of the hashtag for it– #JOMO — this morning on Twitter thanks to Techno Claus @Pogue.  (Hang on, this will unfold into something worthy of #grappling. )  😎

First, tho, you have to know about #FOMO for any of this to make sense.

#FOMO = Fear of Missing Out   Missing what, you might ask…  anything, EVERYTHING! Continue reading

The “Method”…

In my considerable number of years seeking Truth and a path to peace (let’s say at least 40 years of seeking), I have found a handful of “tools” that truly work, ones I return to during “rough patches.” The Progoff Method is one. With America in a pretty rough patch now, this tool might be particularly useful.

Hard to define in a tweet, it’s a method of integrating and making sense of our life journey and charting our way forward. Hey, that will be a tweet!

Dr. Ira Progoff (1921 – 1998) studied privately under Carl Jung (mid 1950s in Switzerland) and then came back to America and specialized in depth psychology. Progoff was not keen on traditional therapy techniques, and eventually developed what we now call simply “The Method” which can be done individually, in private, without a therapist. How?  Continue reading