Joshua Kreig's Sixteenth Annual Christmas Message - The Keeping it Raw, Short, and Not So Sweet Edition

"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." - Desmond Tutu

I have lost hope.

After over 15 years of sitting here writing at Christmas, this is the first year I write without hope. This has been a very very dark year. The abyss has stared back. A year of great loss and struggles with health both of the mind and the body. But yet Christmas is a time of year when we try to fan the flames of hope to bring more light into the darkness. It is also the time of year that brings us closer to the scars of the past, burns of failure, isolation, and abandonment.

Over the summer I tried to capture the darkness in word. I plotted out a three essay arc. Robin Williams had just committed suicide. I wanted to contribute something raw to the conversation on how mental illness destroys hope. I wanted to stop calling this mental illness an illness and just a variation outside the norm. I thought I had a story to share and an insight to offer. The structure and narrative poured out easily. I created a stream of consciousness flow as if trapped in memories that flip across time. I thought it was quite clever as I pushed past anger to get to a truth.

At the start I had no idea how it would end. But I kept pushing forward unwrapping the darkness. And when it came time to write the third act ending? I could not. It is still waiting for an ending. If you want an insight into my brands of madness it is here. Not for the faint of heart but this is how we got to here. (And it's also a great way to pad this piece with previously written content that people may not have seen.)

Act One  My Not So Random Beautiful Madness

Act Two My Not So Random Beautiful Madness

The reason it remains in writer's block hell is because there is no hope. I have been writing in some way shape or form since I was 20. I've been paid to write and I have written to stay sane. The one thread weaved with care throughout all the wordsmithing was hope. Regardless of how ugly or nasty the truth there had to be hope.

I've always fancied myself as someone who could face the harshest realities of life and still have hope in the human experience: still believe in all this magnificence that we've cleverly created, still believe in the human capacity to triumph over adversity, still believe in the bonds of love that bind hearts, still believe that this full catastrophe is worth it. Hope I believe is the power core of human experience. I have lost this hope. I have often said that I used to be a romantic idealist until my life experience beat that shit out of me. I think this year it got any miniscule bits that might have been still lingering in my psyche.

When one loses the prime energy of creation what keeps existence going? How long can a mind languish in despair before the core of hope is drained to empty? What's past empty? If the flame of hope extinguishes what then? Is there something beyond despair? Is there a space we can still call human? How far into the dark beyond the stars can we go before we lose our way back? Robin Williams did not find his way back. Or perhaps he did not find the way to push past despair to whatever that space might contain. Perhaps coming to that edge of darkness was too terrifying.

There is no magic cure, no "have you tried", no hand to take hold of, and nothing to be fixed. I would love to wax poetically on despair and after leading you on a mental tour de force come out the other end all the better knowledged with the appropriate amount of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy to sound erudite if not pedantic. But that would be a lie, a fool's errand. It would be saying the things we need to hear to keep finding meaning in this madness. I have no answers just the solace of chosen solitude. I take comfort in the words of Kahlil Gibran:

from On Pain

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding...

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility...

Perhaps within the silence and tranquility of solitude there is still an ember to be found. Damn it that sounded almost hopeful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5aWtcb_dEg


Merry Christmas.

Joshua Kreig's Fifteenth Anniversary Christmas Message

A Samuel Beckett Alliterated Christmas

Act One

"No one that ever lived ever thought so crooked as we." - Endgame.

I am certain cerebrum certified mammalian bio forms can collectively concur on one point of common concern. To riff a greater queen, this was our annus absurdus. More than a modest modicum of modern absurdity characterized our current social/psychosexual syllabus. Based on an exploration of themes, memes, and schemes that consumed the digital diachronic denizens over the last 12 months, absurd is the word that defines the herd.

In Canada from floods and Fords and federal frauds we witnessed a little egg on everything. Our neighbo(u)rs to the south struggled with the Boston bombing, Medicare meddling, and adolescent affluenza. Have a read for some other 2013 highlight while I pour another drink or two.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013 

At the merciless midway mark I first thought perhaps perchance pernicious cosmic calamity had befallen and the February meteor crash in Russia sent our planet off on an alternate alien assimilated timeline. In March we discovered the roughly rotund rogue of a mayor in Toronto enjoys his social coping mechanisms a bit more than we the popular populace publicly support. Imagine what we don't know. Oh wait, by November we began to see what we did not know. For some reason the mayor does not comprehend the communal concept of moral responsibility. Feeling teacherly, I will break it down.

The English word moral comes directly from the Latin moralis "proper behavior of a person in society," literally "pertaining to manners,". Responsibility - that for which ye shall be held responsible. Again from the fine folks at etymonline.com Responsible (adj.) 1590s, "answerable" (to another, for something), from obsolete French responsible (13c., Modern French responsable, as if from Latin *responsabilis), from Latin respons-, past participle stem of respondere "to respond" (see respond). Meaning "accountable for one's actions" is attested from 1640s; that of "reliable, trustworthy" is from 1690s. Retains the sense of "obligation" in the Latin root word.

Mr Ford does not have the mental nor moral acumen to understand that as long as his copious corpus crams into the municipalities highest pedestal of political power he is obligated to try to be an example of the best behaviour that the general populace has agreed upon. And yes, the mayor of a city should be held to the higher end of that communal spectrum of what it means to be a well behaved citizen. Throughout all this miscreant mischief mister Ford seems only truly sorry about one thing, getting caught. Everything else is callous or clever word play aimed at misdirection or deflection. Mannerly man this man not. As the belligerent bellicose belly bowled over the mores of the masses the city, nation, and planet are left gobsmacked.

“There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.” - Godot

The reason for palm to face en masse is few can understand how a person can go so off societal sanctioned script and not realize it. The red welt growing on the side of the face is the sound of one hand clapping and the realization that municipal politics does not have in place the mechanisms to deal with such mayoral moronic misfiring. Leadership just ain't what it used to be, or is exactly that.

Act Two

In other leadership leading news, in June we learned that "skynet" (Prism) is being built to facilitate big brother's brow beating of anyone asking anything about anything that anyone is analyzing. There are tenacious technological and capitalistic currents creating on autopilot. The oversight of systems is so limited that the systems are being moved forward frenetically while the oversight is a snail of a system two steps slow. We are in control as long as we operate within the systems we serve. Sitting in the dark is not an option. Imagine what we don't know. Oh wait, Mr Snowden, freedom fighter to some techno terrorist to others, gave us a glimmer of a glance behind the hands holding the wool over the woes of us, the mass class of ignoramuses. And then he ends up in Russia...

Speaking of, have you noticed how the idea of gay is becoming more and more polarized? We in the west with our unctuous urbane understanding often fall into cosmopolitan comfort when it comes to homo-happiness. For every place peacefully passing permission slips for same sex services there are lands languishing in lethal laws and dogmas of death. New laws built on old hates killing kindness. Tribal ideologies are aligning. The battle for the dominant global meme is on. The option of returning to our own backyards and learning to play nice has been long off the table. Everyone is elbowing in everyone else's efforts. We believe we are so well-rounded and well-read yet tribal trumping naval gazing glorification is usually the days reading list. Those who hate can spend all their day reading just love for their hate. Those who want to watch anthropomorphic animals have almost as many options. Did you see the video where the dog and the cats are doing the....

“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors.” - Godot

Go pee. Get a beverage. Walk the dog. We're almost home. 

Act Three

Let us not limit our alliterate illustrations to man made maliciousness.

Meanwhile down stream...Mother Nature was being a brutal bitch. Not content to let the wonky worrisome walkers of the world have complete control of the 2013 numbskull narrative, Gaia goes gangsta and attempts to throw water on the ego fire of fickle humanity. I was in Calgary during the flooding in June. Just prior to the washout, I was in Banff the day a guy on a motorcycle was chased by a wolf. Listen we have to lose the Mother Nature metaphor. She ain't yo momma bitch!

HAMM:
Nature has forgotten us.
CLOV:
There's no more nature.
HAMM:
No more nature! You exaggerate.
CLOV:
In the vicinity.
HAMM:
But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals!
CLOV:
Then she hasn't forgotten us.
- Endgame

She was never thinking about you. Nature does not care about you or me.  We are not seraphim suckling at the planetary maternal teat. We do not become masters of this tempestuously turning tableau of human hubris. Instead of beating our chests as the conquerers of carbon we should be beasts on bended knee giving thanks that we have not been bitch-slapped into the middle of next month. The rising water does not dance nor discriminate. The hurricane winds whipper where they will. They don't care if you like penises or vaginas, gods or demons, princes or paupers. Whether the waves are torrents of the miseries of deities or the meteorological manifestation of the laws of natural reality, if you are in the way you will not be for long. Nature will have its way with us regardless of how clever we think we are at outwitting it. I got this heated jacket for Christmas! OMG!

We can do what we want to cope with and manage nature but in the end we are on the short end of the stick and affluenza or drunken stupors won't save us or probably mean much more than moments of madness. 

Absurd is the word defining the herd. How do we moo forward navigating the shit heaps underfoot, all around, falling down? How do we maintain a sense of personal peace pulsing amidst the pounding? Can we be quiet in the noise? Can we move into stillness to cultivate the still? To listen? To hear?

Will we hear? The rhythms.

Everything that has happened has happened.

What happens next?

“Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?
Vladimir: Yes, yes, we're magicians.”  - Godot

End

Five Tips for a Better Yoga Class Experience

You have probably noticed your friendly neighbourhood yoga studio is quite full this time of year as people renew spirits and practices. Over the last five years, many people have asked how to deepen their Yoga practice while at the studio. Before discussing breathing and alignment, I usually start with their process and approach to practice while at the studio. As we try to be mindful of sharing space with others here are a few things that I have experienced to help build the foundation of a strong communal practice. As granny said, sharing is caring, no hogging.

1. Come Early – Sounds simple to say. Yet, life is BUSY and NOISY. Rushing is the main speed of engagement. Try to be on your mat 10 minutes prior to class to chill or perhaps stretch out some tight body parts. Though rushing to the studio may be part of life, when possible try not to rush into practice. That extra 10 minutes will reap great benefits. Always imagine the class will be full and arrange yourself accordingly.

2. Disconnect Sooner – The cell phone is the modern ball and chain. Imagine if you were to lose your cell phone. So much information gone but very soon you would replace it with a shinier phone. Yet we all spend so much time staring at shiny moving screens thinking there is nothing greater. Give yourself the gift of unlocking from the technology of your life before you enter the studio. Check the last message before passing the studio door. Turn off the iPod beforehand. Bring your attention to you. It is time to practice letting go. Your brain will thank you. Then plug back in after you leave the studio.

3. Change BEFORE Entering the Practice Room – Peace and quiet is a rare thing in most lives. Take the journey from check-in to changing as your decompression time. As you head to the change room begin to take some deep inhales and exhales to let go of your day. By keeping the in and out traffic down in the practice room we begin to become more still, creating a space to hear ourselves – a space to meditate before class. In addition, it keeps the room less drafty with better temperature control.

4. Practice Silence in the Room – One of the great things students give feedback on is the space created for peace and stillness. Maintain silence in the practice room to allow people to meditate with as little distraction as possible. Often students purposely come earlier to decompress or limber up.  Please be mindful of the noise you make with your belongings in the room prior to class and as you leave class. Velcro, zippers, mats and keys dropping, and clunking water bottles are the things regular students mention the most. Do enjoy the lounge for a pre-class chat.

5. Stay in Final Savasana LONGER – Often in life we are rushing from asana practice to home or off to other things that need our attention. Taking time in Savasana is not often seen as needed or an option for busy lives. Three conditions should be met before leaving the practice room: your breath rate and heart rate has returned to its resting rate; your perspiration rate has decrease to non-activity levels; and thoughts and emotions are calm. To achieve all of these post asana practice can take anywhere from 3-10 minutes.

Peace and stillness.

Joshua Kreig's Fourteenth Annual Christmas Message

"Peace on Earth, can it be
Years from now, perhaps we'll see
See the day of glory
See the day, when men of good will
Live in peace, live in peace again
Peace on Earth,
Can it be

Every child must be made aware
Every child must be made to care
Care enough for his fellow man
To give all the love that he can"

(from Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy – David Bowie/Bing Crosbie 1977)

Still, despite all, there is hope...

Most politically/socially conscious boomers in North America point to 1968 as the year they lost the socio-ideological war. The assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy killed the spirit of change within the machinations of change. Throughout the world, unrest was peaking. There were victories and defeats. However, the historical evaluation of 44 years ago is that the greater social consciousness movements missed their tipping point in guiding the zeitgeist of North America and perhaps the planet.

This is not a discounting of the victories in civil rights during that period. The world is a better place for the battle fought hard. In Canada the period from 1967-69 was the unwrapping of Justice Minister Trudeau’s Bill C-150 which decriminalised homosexuality, made abortion possible, and legalized contraception. It is here we get the famous, “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”

As the 1970’s unfolded, a shift to greater and greater consumerism was sweeping the world. As wealth increased, the world became hushed to sleep within its comfortable beds of consumer domesticity. At some point, the idea that we were designed to accumulate more and more for ourselves crossed three generations' consciousness. Consumerism has become ideologically embedded in the young. This is an important thing to accept. We are programmed to consume. High levels of wealth in North America and other countries have been sustained since the 1950’s without catastrophic interruption. Sure, there have been shortages and crashes and a war or three, but the majority weathered these with relative ease when compared with previous generations.

If we go back to pre-WWI the world map was not as connected. Our isolation and fragmentation had an insulating and protectiveness to it. WWI is the beginning of a global alignment of resources for a single purpose. However, the safety loop was, war reminded humans that there is more to life than financial wealth and individual concerns.  There are great communal goods and causes. After WWI came the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. These are more great equalizers that reminded people that there is more to life than wealth. WWII was the next great mass alignment of economic resources for a single purpose. It is WWII and the business and political agreements made post war that has arranged the map of the world as we see it today.

From 1945 – 1968 there was unprecedented wealth in North America. In addition, global resources were feeding it and the world was getting overall richer in goods and cash. With the deaths of King and Kennedy, and the spirit inside the machine broken, the consumer capitalist nature of the machine took over. Profits over people.

From the Korean War and Vietnam War forward, wars have been contained to do minimum damage globally while supplying great profit to people outside those places of war. When it is in someone else’s backyard, we can turn up the music and enjoy our BBQ. With the de-escalation of the Cold War by 1991, this further averted a catastrophe that would have shocked us into realizing there was more to life than listening to Nirvana, watching the Terminator return, and playing Sonic the Hedgehog.

The 1990s and 2000s have played witness to gross exaggerations of global consumerism. The complex economic and political machinations that keep it going are geared for a single purpose -growth through profit. We are strip-mining the resources of the planet bare at such a rate that we risk never being able to sustain life as is. All signs say we cannot keep living the way we live today. The math does not lie. The person doing the math chooses to ignore the reality on the page and manipulate the variables.

How did we lose our way? Actually, this is the wrong question. The more accurate question, “How did our way become one of individual consumer satisfaction?” When did we move from communal thinking to individual thinking?

Once upon a time, we respected the power of business to help us be human. Once upon a time, we respected the power of government to help us be human. Once upon a time, we respected the power of science to help us be human. Once upon a time, we respected the power of law to help us be human. Once upon a time, we respected the power of education to help us be human. Once upon a time, we respected the power of religion to help us be human. - This is where every child was made aware, every child made to care, care enough for his or her fellow human, to give all the love that they can. There was a delicate checks and balance between all institutions maintaining a dynamic tension in the system. Allowing it to advance but not get too ahead of itself. This dynamic tension held the reins on the machines of consumer capitalist ideologies.

As we gained more and more knowledge of our systems, our curiosity could not handle the human realities found within those systems. We panicked. We did not know how to handle imperfect institutions. We slowly lost faith. Pick all these institutions and you will find them riddle with scandals, corruption, and human tragedy. We reacted by dismantling or abandoning institutions, leaving those who believe in them to become a tribe of their own.

Without our institutions working collectively on a common definition of our collective goals, we are aimless ships at sea without a command crew. Consumerism without a master runs wild directionless as we glide unawares. If we continue to place less and less faith in our systems what do we have left? What are the new thought paradigms we need to explore to create a global definition of communal humanity?

Over the last 44 years, half of us have lost faith in big business, government, science, law, education, and religion. The suspicion and distrust of institutions has been passed on to two generations. After the loss of social institutions that teach us how to be more than me and mine, the only thing left is looking out for me and mine. There is no big picture. We are then left to the voices of getting more for me and mine as cheaply and efficiently as possible – consumerism the oil of business.

Consumerism is not evil. It is a system requiring checks and balances outside itself to be sure the machinations of business are serving a purpose and never become THE purpose. Consumerism requires a complex business structure to maintain itself. The more we feed it the more it grows all encompassing to the point it is impossible to extricate one from it without retiring to the woods with a Swiss Army Knife and some dry sticks. To give us more as cheaply as possible and as efficiently as possible, we have put in place systems that are now maintaining that ideology. How often have you encountered a human being with a request and after checking something in a machine they say, “Sorry, we cannot do that.” Those interested in the business of consumerism have put in place a system that looks after combating checks and balances.

That is the real purpose of the remnants of Occupy Wherever. The machines of business have to be reoriented. The firmware needs an update. Business has always been with us and we have always been consuming. Business has the infrastructure to facilitate any course corrections we humans request of it. We just need to be reminded that we can live life based on more than our consumer desires and appetites. It used to be the complex role of and synergy between our institutions that informed our decisions.

Our modern explorations with atheism and buddhism to yoga and zen, says the modern human is looking for a way to structure their relationship to the world. They are looking for an ideological framework from which to act.

The world is pondering what's next without a communal framework to ponder the question.

As I look back on 2012, I see patterns in history repeating. The scale of civil unrest around the world is at an all time high. Clashes of ideologies and institutions are at an all time high. The struggle to define how humans are to be with humans is at an all time high. The East continues to be in turmoil with civil unrest, the West flirts with financial collapse with politics getting uglier, and Tibetans are setting themselves on fire. 

Can we have systemic change?

Is it even possible to step outside of our consumer domestication? Can we course correct an ideology that is almost three generations embedded? Has the system taken over to the point that it does not allow change? If that is the case then only a collapse within the system can evoke change. Without the collapse, the system self-perpetuates and sets in motion all regulation for such perpetuations. If we have no faith in a unity of vision, shared by all, then we can never agree upon what to correct. There is no core ideology to guide correction.

There is a battle of ideologies brewing before us that can only be played out and not avoided. The war of memes is the third world war. If we allow it, ideological tribalism will be the downfall of modern life as we know it. This is an easy assertion when you look at the amount of noise and the intensity of noise as ideologies battle for territory. We fight dirty. We manipulate truths. We skew realities. We lie. All tribes do this to defend and validate their truth.

As a gay man and a former Catholic seminarian, I find myself in such a war. Gay rights throughout the world have grown over the last 44 years. The recent news from the USA on gay marriage is an indication of shifting ideologies. However, the counter voices are growing even louder. The recent papal message said gay marriage will be the end of society. The pope believes it must be fought on all fronts. There are 1.2 billion Catholics on the planet. How many do you think are waiting to hear something like that to justify more hate? I studied Catholic theology for three years. Nowhere is the church given the right to instigate such hate. What I find sad is that there is such beauty and truth within the Christian story. The religious rites around the stages of life give comfort, structure, and ceremony and these run the risk of being lost.

All the tribes everywhere are fighting their ideological battles. Whether it is economics or education, guns or government all are defending their tribal ideologies.

Yet beneath all the tribal truths, there exist all the same truths. Everyone is trying to get enough resources to look after themselves and theirs. Can we not accept that we can do that communally with peace and goodwill towards all? We are as removed from being our neighbour’s keeper as any time in history. Yet we have so many ideals we strive for: justice, fairness, equality, universal respect, kindness, and perhaps compassion.

As I reflect on the year and all the micro and macro struggles and suffering that surrounds us I cannot say I know how there will be peace in all that mess. Perhaps our accumulative karma is unfolding before us. Will those of us amidst our struggles for a greater world consciousness look back on these years and say we seized our tipping point? Will we look back as the generation before us did and say, we lost the war despite our spotted victories? On the other hand perhaps neither this nor that.

Despite the struggles, I believe there is a great sense of hope in the world. There has to be. I have to believe that an informed person spending time with another informed person of different colours and creeds can sit and care for each other as part of the human family. I believe that peace on earth and goodwill towards all is possible. I believe we can awaken to a new sense of communal human purpose. I believe that one day I will be able to walk in any city in the world with my lover in hand and nobody will give a shit.

I think we once knew that we can be all these things but we have fallen asleep. It was our institutions keeping us somewhat awake to our greater good. Now we have our iPhone. Some days I think we are rousing from our slumber and some days I think we have slipped into a spiritual coma. Maybe we are just hitting the snooze button too often.

Nevertheless, hope remains. Now if we could figure out faith and charity.
 
Love and peace always,
 
Joshua

Merry Christmas 2012