[rowan says] Psi Alphabet: C is for [the] Clairs

"Clairaudience." Image courtesy Astoria Brown.

I was well into my 30s before I learned there were other sensory ways to portend the future aside from sight. Perfectly healthy and normal friends of mine would talk about hearing voices in particular situations telling them something important, or experiencing a sense of menace in a place, or smelling a past loved one's cigar smoke suddenly, or just "knowing" something would happen without any good reason. Now I know that all of these kinds of sensory intuition are gathered under one umbrella. They are known as "the clairs," which might be another way to describe sixth (or other) senses.

To wit: 

Clairvoyance: The most commonly understood intuitive skill, clairvoyance is the ability to visually perceive something that others cannot see. These "visions" aren't necessarily seen with traditional human optics but may be expressed as "flashes" or "movies" or images within "the mind's eye." I certainly have experienced more than my fair share of this since my head injury. Sometimes people lump all extrasensory skills under the label of clairvoyance, but really, they all have their own provenance.

Clairaudience: This intuitive skill allows a person to tune into the sound vibrations from different vibrations or dimensions. They are also more likely to hear these sounds, vibrations, even words from inside the "inner ear" or otherwise without the aid of the physical ear. I don't often experience this except in dreams; there's that whispering woman who I still can't identify... she speaks in riddles. I used to be afraid of her but have since learned she's one of my guides (as I learned the solutions to the riddles, I found answers to my problems). Even my most psychic friends can't identify just who (or what) she is.

Clairsentience: The perception of reality beyond the normal limitations of time and space that leaves a person with a whole-body "feeling" about something that has already happened or will happen, despite the fact they have no ordinary information to lead them to that conclusion. My best friend, Frankie, is intuitive like this. I've learned it's best to just listen to her! Clairsentience is not to be confused with... 

Clairempathy: When a person profoundly identifies with others at the emotional level, especially when there are no outward cues to identify such emotions. People who are clairempathic are usually referred to as empaths. These "shared" emotional experiences can relate to people, animals or even place. A friend of mine often describes her relationship with her daughter in these terms, how her girl, even at a very early age, would know she had a headache and put a cool little palm to her forehead, how her little hand seemed to take the pain away. Lovely.

Clairtangency:  Otherwise known as psychometry. This is one of the more familiar ways that people tune into other dimensions; they simply handle objects or touch areas of the body to glean information about a person (living or dead). One of my favorite psychics is Noreen Rainer, who uses psychometry to great effect in solving missing persons cases. 

Clairaroma: Yep, you guessed it: smelling a fragrance or odor which cannot be traced to anything within one's surroundings. Generally not sensed through the physical nose. It is said that when you sleep, you lose your sense of smell. Very recently I noticed the extremely vibrant and pungent odor of white vinegar while I was dreaming. In fact, it kicked me out of my dream! But when I woke up, there was nothing in my room that had that smell at all.

Clairgustance: The same can be said for taste. This is when you have a strong, well-defined taste in your mouth without consuming or even smelling the item in that moment. The sudden experience of tasting blood or a cloying spice or a caustic chemical might be your perception of information about something that has happened in your current location or it might be a conveyance to you from an entity in another dimension. I don't think this has ever happened to me. 

I'd like to add one other category, because I think it can stand on its own: prophetic dreams. Not a clair by definition, these kinds of dreams are still a way of perceiving information through a portal other than one's own five physical senses. I know a woman who has been having prophetic dreams since she was a teenager, usually predictions of nonevents, but occasionally she has had entire scenes unfold before her in dreamscape only to discover the scenes were real-life events taking place around the world (some pleasant, others not so much). 

Commonly, people either believe or don't believe in these "abilities." My feeling is that all human beings are born with these sensory skills, but the lifestyle and worldview we raise our children in tends to let these skills die on the vine before they can be fully developed. Still, some of us (usually it's creative people or the eccentric) manage to hone these skills in adulthood. At any rate, intuition, however it may or may not come to us, is a challenging phenomenon to study and test, but parapsychologists have been at it for years. 

For instance, Wolfgang Metzger's ganzfeld experiment set out to test individuals for extrasensory perception or sixth sense (aka "the clairs") back in the 1930s. (ESP) by using homogeneous, unpatterned sensory stimulation to produce effects on subjects that were similar to sensory deprivation. Parapsychologists insist that ganzfeld experiments have yielded statistically significant results proving the existence of skills like clairvoyance. 

Of course, critics like scientist Susan Blackmore, who initially worked in parapsychology and paranormal research before shifting to a skeptical purview, read the research behind ganzfield experiments differently and insisted the results weren't conclusive at all.

In current American pop culture, it seems pretty acceptable that such extrasensory skills exist. How many friends, neighbors, coworkers, family members, even perfect strangers make comments about feeling or being psychic about something? You know what I mean. "I heard the phone ringing, I just knew it was you!" or "A little voice told me to go home; when I got there, I found I'd left my iron on." or "My late Aunt Edna must have stopped by when I was out; I can smell her lilac perfume in my kitchen." 

It's no longer taboo to suggest that you might have an extraordinary intuitive skill, even when science can't agree whether such a skill can even exist. I think, in fact, that one's religious affiliation may have more to do with whether you believe such a skill exists. Catholics will nod knowingly when one talks about seeing the virgin mother's visage in tree bark during your weekend hike; evangelical protestants, on the other hand, might send you down to the river for a baptism or a laying of hands to wrench the demon out of you, should you share that bit of personal information at Sunday school! But Eastern religions seem to acknowledge the notion of the ethereal (nonphysical) senses in a way that may suggest a greater comfort with the phenomenon; they might say such sensations are messages from a past life or  a spirit guide.

As usual, whether "the clairs" are real sensory experiences ultimately depends upon what we believe, as individuals and as communities.

How does the discussion about the clairs fit inside the paranormal? Well, this is more cut and dry than most; even if scientists don't agree on the existence of extrasensory perception, there's been lots of research done on the topic with no end in sight. Quantum scientists might be especially thrilled to find proof of such phenomenon because it could lead to more discoveries of or research into multidimensional reality, their favorite cup of tea.

So here's the part where I tell you what I think... but I can guess you already know on what side I fall in this debate. I happily welcome conflicting points of view on this topic, though I haven't really found anything to convince me that sixth and other senses don't exist. I mean, just because science hasn't yet proved it in a laboratory setting doesn't mean it's a flight of fancy, it only means we haven't figured out how to measure it properly... yet.

What do you think?

Outside reading

What is Sixth Sense? A Spiritual Perspective || Spiritual Science Research Foundation

Extrasensory Perception || WilliamJames.com

The Art of Intuition website

Telepathy and Clairvoyance || Jane Henry for The Scientific and Medical Network

The Scientific Evidence for Telepathy: Psi Phenomena, Part 1 || Genuine Thriving

The Scientific Evidence for Clairvoyance: Psi Phenomena, Part 2 || Genuine Thriving

The Scientific Evidence for Precognition: Psi Phenomena, Part 3 || Genuine Thriving

Previously:

A is for Afterlife

B is for Blessings and Banishments

[rowan says] Psi Alphabet: B is for Blessings and Banishments

"San Francisco de Borja y el moribundo
(boceto)" ("Saint Francis Borgia performing
an exorcism") by Francisco Goya (1788).

The notion of a blessing is not lost on Americans. Many of us "say grace" at the dinner table, or speak out blessings to perfect strangers when they sneeze, for instance. The phrase, "bless your little heart," is a sweetly vernacular practice and to hear the president ask that "God bless America" is usually only reviled by the staunchest of atheists.

Banishments are a more ugly flip side to blessings that we don't always like to address. Families banish members all the time due to disagreements, protests over lifestyle choices, revelations like homosexuality and even due to an unwillingness or inability to deal with mental illness. We banish members in society when we ostracize them from events (by not inviting them) or put them in jail for committing crimes. Our country banishes other countries through political or economic sanctions.

In the world of the paranormal, blessings and banishments are far more specific terms used to assert the gifting or revocation of sacred energy.

The most common way to define this appropriation of energy is through the Catholic rite of exorcism.

(Other religions have similar rites but I am mostly versed in the practices of the Catholics, in this regard; I don't mean to leave anyone out of the discussion, I can only speak to what little I understand.)

If a person believes he or she is "possessed" in some way by a negative energy (in Catholic theology, this means demons, the Devil or Satan), they go to a priest with training in exorcism to have the priest do two things: bless their souls in God's name and banish the evil entity that has somehow latched onto them.

An exorcism does both, in theory, and those afflicted who see an exorcist with a true case of demonic possession (sometimes this isn't what's wrong) generally feel a weight lifted from their soul and a sense of liberation from the evil or negative thoughts and impulses that had beleaguered them before.

I personally think that the performance of an exorcism, if done by a skilled practitioner and under the advisement of both a medical doctor and a psychologist, is probably a good thing much in the same way I think therapy is a great outlet for people who are depressed. Being proactive about a personal dilemma is often the most clear-cut path to healing for anybody. Placebo effects, if they work, are a good thing, as can be the power of suggestion to move someone beyond a rut in their psyche. If a person believes in God and has a strong Catholic practice, then a visit from an exorcist could be just the ticket for lightening one's load and moving that much closer to spiritual peace.

Of course, scientific inquiry sees exorcism as a bogus practice, by and large, because of its reliance on belief without any presumed medical or physical observation to reinforce the practice. The Vatican, however, does require its exorcists to work in a tag team with these kinds of professionals, who are asked to determine if the problem is medical, psychological or spiritual. When physicians and psychologists sign off that the patient is otherwise normal, then the third assumption, that the problem is spiritual, becomes the focus of the person's issue, and a person of the cloth is then asked to step in at the behest of the patient.

But not all scientists are against the idea of exorcism. Many scientists (more than you would expect) have a deep faith in God and might personally welcome the idea of an exorcism in the absence of physical or psychological explanations for certain kinds of inexplicable behaviors. Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck researched exorcisms in the 1980s and concluded that the Christian concepts of evil and possession were genuine, that possessed people were victims of evil, not incarnations of evil themselves. He did not think of evil or possession as common phenomena, though he asserted that evil carried a correlational relationship to Satan. Naturally, the scientific community did not respond well to these ideas and his request to add the condition of "evil" to the DSM was rejected. Still, he had popular support from laypeople and his book, The Road Less Traveled, which pursued the idea of spiritual evolution, was a bestseller.

Today, Americans can watch all manner of cable programs highlighting the "need" for blessings and banishments in homes thought to be haunted or for people thought to be the center of poltergeist activity. Most people are now familiar with the notion of hiring the clergy to walk through your space with a cross, a squeeze bottle of holy water and an open Bible from which prayers are recited as the the clergy move from room to room. Or, in the case of "haunted" individuals, the blessings over an individual include pressing a crucifix to the back of a person's neck or forehead while prayers are chanted in hopes of driving away the evil energy. The drama, of course, comes when the house responds by flickering lights or making banging sounds or becoming ice-cold, or the possessed one's face contorts, he or she speaks "in tongues" and mysterious marks like scratches appear on his or her body. Which all makes for great television, but which is also problematic for skeptics and media savvy types who know just how easy this all is to fake.

Listen, I think it's always a good idea to have your living space blessed. Feng shui is a practice in space clearing and cleansing which helps to strengthen and clarify the positive energies in one's home or place of work. And who doesn't gain from a personal blessing? I don't attend any church but if a nun were to walk up to me and give me a blessing I'd be ever so grateful and loving in response. Blessing is another word for love, which for many is another word for God. God can be the father of Jesus or Source or Creator or Gaia or whomever you want God to be.

Which brings us back to the question of how we define blessings and banishments. The answer, of course, ultimately depends on what we believe.

How does the discussion about blessings and banishments fit inside the paranormal?

Energy, whether it can be easily defined or whether it exists only in that paranormal section of the inexplicable, is one of the chief focal points for quantum physicists, so the idea of gifting or revoking sacred energy, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, makes it a worthwhile discussion within the paranormal realm.

(Of course, my personal experience has always shown me that giving blessings to others everyday in the form of good manners, smiles, donations and expressions of gratitude are the best blessings of all. They fuel that energy stream we all swim inside with positivity. When we do the opposite--such as swearing, spitting, being selfish, lamenting what we don't have--we are in some ways banishing ourselves from that shared energy stream, even polluting it. It never pays to be the bad guy, not in the long run. And that means we should all try to offer and accept all the blessings we are able to, and to avoid those negative behaviors that poison the well.)

What do you think?

Outside reading

Matt Baglio: The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist

5 Ways to Express Gratitude through Yoga (Yoga Journal, Nov 2011)

What's the Harm in Exorcisms?

"A Headhunter to Banish the Devil" (The Independent, Feb 1996)

John O'Donohue: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Previously:

A is for Afterlife
Next:
C is for [the] Clairs

[rowan says] Psi Alphabet: A is for Afterlife

"Der Weg ins Jenseits"
("Journey to the Afterlife")
by Hieronymous Bosch.

How do you define the afterlife?

Of course, that depends a good deal on what you believe in. People who cleave to religious faith have their paths "after life" more or less laid out for them depending upon the tenets of their chosen holy books and leaders. Other spiritual types who don't go in for organized religion may believe in a return to a giant pool of energy, or to a regenerative cycle of life wherein one is reborn. Those who don't believe there is an afterlife pretty much assume we'll all become compost of some sort or another.

And really, all of these ideas have great merit. I wouldn't mind going to heaven. As a sometimes gardener,  I wouldn't mind becoming compost, which is, in some ways, a special kind of reincarnation, is it not? I don't want to debate among these theories because they all provide a (mostly) positive account of life after death that I find comforting.

But some people undergo what is called a "near-death experience" or NDE, in which they die for a measurable period of time, are resuscitated, then come back with stories of visiting places where souls might go after they die while they were scientifically determined to be brain dead. 

Scientifically, there's much to debate of late about the afterlife. In 2012, radiation oncologist Dr. Jeffrey Long published his book, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences, which really puts to task the observations of all manner of physicians (neurologists, cardiologists, emergency room doctors) who believe that near-death experiences can be explained purely by medical means (i.e., drug-induced hallucinations). Long's book uncovers research of thousands of first-hand NDE accounts in a fairly scientific attempt to reveal what medical evidence has failed to explain in the past, highlighting that medical explanations for NDEs can be disproven, revealing the possibility of the afterlife even if we can't measure it empirically yet.

Science podcaster Alex Tsakiris, a strong supporter of Dr. Long's, has hosted dozens, if not hundreds, of debates on the afterlife as well at his very interesting program, Skeptiko: Science at the Tipping Point. I know I've found his NDE debates not only lively but bold in their attempts to ferret out real scientific theory and method around subjects like near-death experiences and the afterlife, which have previously fallen under more dubious scientific inquiry.

The stories are fascinating regardless one's position on the debates. Perhaps one of the most intriguing near-death experiences I've ever heard reported was the story of Maria's Shoe which seems to defy all scientific and medical explanation.

Culturally, the near-death experience came into "fashion" after Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (On Life After Death, The Wheel of Life) and Raymond Moody (Life After Life) turned out books that explored the possibility of life after death in the 1970s. People began to appear on television talk shows sharing their experiences of floating above their own dead bodies, walking toward a light and conversing with dead loved ones before making the trip back to the land of the living. This was also the time the New Age movement gained traction, urging a union between the spiritual and the scientific; followers eagerly embraced the metaphysical ideas behind near-death experiences and visions of the afterlife.

The traditional scientific community, however, did not embrace these ideas and both groups remain divided in ideology. Still, new technologies in hospitals have been used to measure situations where near-death experiences might occur, and some evidence points to a renewed need for study into a new arena of scientific inquiry--consciousness itself--as a result.

It's really hard to debate controversies and misconceptions about the afterlife these days without getting caught up in that same division between the spiritual and the empirical. Still, there's growing scientific evidence to suggest that there may very well be dimensions beyond our corporeal life that exist for our souls after we physically die. And there's still division even among the religious and the spiritual as to whether this points to God or consciousness or something else entirely. According to one source, nearly 95 percent of evangelical Christians reject the possibility of near-death experiences.

So the controversies brew and will continue to until someone or something comes along to show unequivocal proof otherwise. All we have, now, are the anecdotal stories of people who've died and come back, some intriguing scientific research and a lot of resistance to the notion from all sides of the belief spectrum.

How does the discussion about the afterlife fit inside the paranormal?

My feeling is that the question of dimensionality that the study of NDEs raises with regard to the afterlife is more in line with the aims and theories of quantum physics, which places it under the purview of paranormal science. I'm intrigued, in particular, by what Fred Allen Wolf says on the subject of quantum physics and consciousness.

Ghosts, multiple universes, parallel dimensions, time travel: these are all part of that same category of study as well. It would make sense that, with so many people coming forward to share their stories of crossing over into a world linked to some kind of afterlife, whether it is a spiritual experience or not, that these quantum quandaries fit within the bounds of the paranormal.

(Of course, having traveled through "the ectosphere" myself, back and forth in The Borderland, I have to claim a particular bias, but that's okay. After my initial journeys there, I did a ton of reading and discovered so many stories and studies to back up my first-hand experiences that I don't mind if others disagree. I know what I know, scientifically proven or otherwise, and that's good enough for me.)

What do you think?

Outside reading

Dr. Bruce Greyson: "Survival of Bodily Death: Near-Death Experiences" - Esalen Invitational Conference, December 1998

"About Near-Death Experiences" - IANDS (International Association for Near-Death Studies)

"Celestial Travelers Near-Death Experiences" Home Page

"Religious Interpretations of NDEs" - Dr. David San Filippo

The Spiritual Universe: One Physicist's Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter and Self - Fred Allen Wolf

Next:
B is for Blessings and Banishments

[rowan says] Introducing the Psi Alphabet

In light of the rising popularity of paranormal subjects in our entertainment media, yet despite the fact that curious folks have information virtually at their fingertips, I find it rather curious that people still don't really understand the term "paranormal."

Here's a great way to break down the idea of the paranormal in a way that more accurately defines it (hat tip to Neil McNeill for clarifying this):

If:

• A paralegal is someone who works in concert with a lawyer. 
• A paramedic is someone who works in concert with a doctor. 
• A para-educator is someone who works in concert with a teacher. 

Then:

• Paranormal means to work in concert with the normal.

Paranormal subjects generally arise as a blend of scientific theory, observation and philosophy. My aforementioned cohort, Neil McNeill, likes the idea of renaming paranormal research as Psi research. Psi, the 23rd letter in the Greek alphabet, is often used symbolically in quantum physics, which is the school of science probably most aligned with paranormal theory. 

Still, as a culture, we struggle to wrap our minds around this way of thinking, often referring to the paranormal as:

• "woo woo" (a dismissive comment showing moral and social bias) 
• "supernatural" (which is aligned not with science but with the occult and other belief systems) 
• "irrational" (despite scads of scientific studies that show substantial proof to the contrary) 
• "New Age" (again, a derogatory claim of anti-logical thinking)

Now, I'm no expert on the subject in that I'm not a trained paranormal scientist (and no, that's not a contradiction in terms, folks), but I can certainly share what I've learned ever since I developed my ability to traffic between this world and the world of the Borderland. I can only speak from my own experience, but as a journalist, I've spent more time than most doing research to figure out what fits where on the Psi spectrum. 

So... welcome to my informal Psi Alphabet! I'm going to post a couple of entries each month in pursuit of definitions and understanding about the widely various phenomena which fall under the aegis of the paranormal. My goal is to share some insight into the scientific background for each of these phenomena, as well as clear up any misconceptions about the paranormal or discuss the controversies surrounding these phenomena. 

Again, I'm not hoping to write the authoritative text on the paranormal here; my hope is to just help ordinary people to distinguish the difference between things which "work in concert with the normal" and things which fall into other categories entirely.

I'll see you next week with my first entry: The Afterlife. In the meantime, write to me if you have a particular subject you'd like me to cover. It could be one that confuses you, one that's controversial, one which you have a lot of doubts about, anything. Chances are, if I don't have direct experience with your topic, I've come across the topic in my research and can shed some light on the subject!

A is for Afterlife (2.10.12)
B is for Blessings and Banishments (2.21.12)
C is for [the] Clairs (3.9.12)

[rowan says] On the GOP debates, Paula Deen and barn raising

"An Argument from Opposite Premises"
by Ralph Hedley (1913)

So when did our world become so markedly polarized? 

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

I stopped by the Cup & Saucer recently to bide my time while I waited to pick up my mother from her nearby appointment. While lingering over tea and a magazine, I overhead two people arguing about the GOP political debates. Not discussing. Arguing. 

At one point, one guy got up, let out a curse and walked off, sticking his friend with the bill, which he couldn't pay. I loaned him the extra five bucks, kind of chuckling when I told him, lightheartedly, how it's just not worth the energy to get that worked up about politics. 

He looked at me wryly and said, "Oh, you're one of those people." I asked him what he meant, and he said, "You know, someone who says they aren't political so they can be absolved of any blame when the wrong guy gets into office."

That could have made me upset but, really, I felt sorry for the guy. I'm not apathetic, by any means. I think political debate is critical to democracy. I believe people should talk more about politics, not less. But talk, not fight. 

Beating our heads against a brick wall

When we fight with friends and family over politics, does it really change the greater society? I suppose the idealists among us would say it's a worthwhile fight, but when there's no intent on either side (because lines have been drawn in the sand, right?) to listen, no desire to understand one another, how can that change anything?

(I guess my Generation Xer slip is showing, eh?)

Allow me this much. I believe that all this collective stress we're undergoing as a culture, especially in an election year on the heels of a crummy economy, is a terrible waste of psychic energy. Most people I know are not particularly flexible about their political opinions, which means that the chance for a meaningful discussion about politics is all but impossible. Things have really crossed over into the black and white, the gray areas of life nearly obliterated by our collective taking up of sides.

"Helping the Homeless" by Ed Yourdon (2008).
CCA-SA 2.0 Generic license

Why go there? Why take all that psychic capital and sink it into a useless circular quarrel when you could take the same energy and focus it on giving people a helping hand? Why not open a door for a mother with a stroller? Give a hot cup of coffee to a homeless person. Practice patience while waiting in line so that, when it's your turn at the counter, you can offer the clerk on the other side a smile and a thumbs up for a job well done. Hug your loved ones at the end of the day for no good reason. Why not spend your energy in that way instead?

I know, I know. Some will say that's precisely what's wrong with our culture, that we are apathetic because we don't engage ourselves in political discourse at all. I'm not saying that the discourse itself is the problem; the problem is that we don't know how to go about it anymore in a way that shows we know how to listen, to respect and to be thoughtful. 

With the loss of newspapers as a more balanced source of political information, with the New Journalism being a vapid caricature of the values of the original Fourth Estate, and with the way we've handed our social skills over to the Internet, we've lost our ability to be civil about anything, it seems. 

Peace begins with community building

As I left to pick up my mother, I walked past a small storefront which displayed a trio of historical photographs. One of them showed a dozen or so men helping to push up the framed-in wall of a newly built barn. As I recall, barn raisings were not originally the job of a construction company; they were symbolic gatherings of neighborhood volunteers to help a family start their homestead. It made me wonder; unless we are functioning in a state of emergency, how often do we really engage in togetherness on the community level? 

Related: Later that day at the store, I overheard two women in the grocery store line pointing at the magazine rack and talking--no, laughing--about the recent buzz on Southern cook, Paula Deen. She'd announced she'd developed Type 2 Diabetes and had taken on a sponsorship with an insulin company. 

"Paula Deen " by dbking (2010).
CCA 2.0 Generic license.

I don't know much about Paula Deen. I don't watch Food TV. I'm not from the South. But neither do I live in a cave. I know that she's famous for having a bit of a love affair with butter and fried foods, that she's often the butt of jokes when it comes to healthy eating, and that she's really good at putting her face on kitchen merchandise. 

Regardless, I don't feel it's okay to judge her for developing diabetes. I can see the impulse to rush to judgment, but the fact is that none of us really know Paula Deen that well. We know her persona from TV, but that doesn't mean we have insight into her 24-7 lifestyle. Nor can any of us presume to know for certain that her lifestyle did, in fact, cause her to develop diabetes (take a look at the risk factors here). 

How many of us really understand
how genetics works?

Remembering what we don't know

I don't know much about my genetic predispositions, as I have no idea if my biological parents are still alive, and if they are, what their health issues are. So there's always a chance that I might have diabetes in my genes and not even know it. 

Some people can have healthy habits their entire lives and still succumb to diabetes or other life-threatening conditions. It happens all the time, in fact. What about the guy that my editor Christopher knew who jogged five miles a day, then dropped dead on his treadmill? Or the beautiful girl in that article I wrote about AIDS and teens, Kaycee, who eventually died, after years of scorn from her family and peers, from HIV-related infections she'd suffered via a blood transfusion she'd received after a terrible car accident.

Oh, how we love to tear down our idols

To hear people yukking it up over Paula Deen's misfortune is really disquieting. She's only just begun her own regimens and lifestyle changes, as well as her campaign to help people deal with, maybe even prevent, diabetes. And as luck would have it, she's a public person, so there's no hope for her to do this work on the sly. It's a little soon to know whether she, as a "brand" or "example," will have a good influence over people's choices, but why not give her some time to make that happen? Sometimes the best examples come from those who've been to the dark side. 

I keep coming back to a larger question:

When somebody we don't--can't--really know falls to misfortune like a diabetes diagnosis, does it affect you or me directly? Usually not. It's those we are closest to that matter, not some TV chef we'll never meet in person. 

"Romantic and Atmospheric Grave"
by Helen Kendrick Johnson (1990).

You and I are dying right now

Each of us spends our entire life dying in some way. Yep, you heard me right. Dying. Every time we encounter a toxin, enter into risky behavior (which includes driving a car or having a glass of wine) or do things we love, like travel abroad, we risk cutting our lives short. All the best intentions in the world, all the healthiest habits we engage in still cannot promise us immortality. All that these good choices can do is help us delay our shared ultimate outcome: death. 

Not to mention how ludicrous it is to assert that some of us deserve better or worse outcomes based on assumptions about lifestyle that none of us have any right to make. 

As if any of this really matters

Listen, I met a girl in the Borderland who'd died of a head injury; I helped her cross over. Eventually she came back to pay me a visit, and during that time, I noticed that her head injury had completely vanished. When I asked about it, she explained quite simply: "The pain fell away and took the wound with it." I also ran into another soul who had not lived so innocent a life, having spent a few years in jail for pimping prostitutes. While in jail, another inmate cut his cheek deeply with a knife, leaving a deeply embedded scar that disfigured his lips and nose. When he came to me astrally, long after he'd died, his cheek was completely healed. How could I know what that looked like? I'd only seen him with the scar on his face while he was alive. 

It got me to thinking: maybe all the aches and pains and scars and disfigurements we endure in life are just physical reminders of lessons to be learned. Maybe, if we learn them, we are rewarded in the afterlife with freedom from these visual reminders. So, in light of all this, maybe all this fighting, this harsh judgmentalism, is for nothing. And if it is, wouldn't it be a shame to spend so much of our psychic capital on it while we are still alive?

Choosing the high road of compassion

So while we're in this station of life, this Here and Now we share, I think it's worth it for all of us to think about why we react so quickly and with so little compassion to others' misfortunes, why we can no longer respectfully disagree about societal and philosophical ideals. What do we hope to gain as individuals from these negative behaviors? 

"Barn Raising" by John Boyd (1908).

It's not so much a case of minding our own business. It's just that we would all do much better to refocus our attention on the ways we could boost our own physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual energies in order to live as many years as possible. And to live, ideally, as a community.

Living long means many more opportunities to raise barns, donate pennies to the cause, make finger paintings with our kids and embrace those people who truly bring joy into our lives. 

Unlike quarreling and judgmental behavior, these acts of good intention are never a waste of time.