Mind/Body/Spirit

Today, I stepped way outside my comfort zone. I did something I have never done, with people I have never met at a place I only started going to in the last week. It was, for absolutely no reason, scary, but I also haven’t felt this energized in many, many years. But I am getting ahead of myself, it didn’t “just happen.” It was a conscious decision, and the following is what led up to it. 

We are each made up of mind, body and spirit; these three aspects work in harmony and the better we balance and are in tune with them, the better we will feel. In less than six months, my world has undergone significant changes. I turned 63 years old, I retired and, factoring in the continuing ramifications of my social circle implosion, nothing, it seems, is the same. It’s not all bad; in fact, it’s not even mostly bad; it is a thing and it must be adapted to. That is where this “mind/body/spirit” triad comes into play. I feel, for no direct reason, disharmony. It’s nothing new, it has come and gone over my many years. But this time, it’s at a time when everything is mostly good – even those social ramifications, now no longer new, have proven beneficial. So, why the disharmony? It’s because of balance and neglect – specifically, neglecting my spirit and my body. Of the two, my body is most neglected. That does not mean I am unhealthy, but it does mean that I have not moved either very much for a long time.

My spirit underwent a literal overhaul when I stopped drinking and drugging. For my more than 21 years of sobriety, spiritual work has been not just desirable, not just important, but absolutely necessary. Prior to that, I never gave it even a seat at the table, dismissing “spirituality” and its derivatives as various forms of silly. Even in sobriety, being an atheist, I struggle with the idea/belief of spirituality. They say that spirituality and religion are not the same thing and that sobriety is a spiritual journey, but many of their walks don’t match their talk. Can it be done with just a mind/body paradigm? Sure, I did that too, and I do not discount others who see the world that way. For me, spirituality could very well be folded into “mind,” but I find it more effective leaving it separate, mystical and always new. All that said, my spirituality has not been new in a very long time – it is stagnant.

As has been my body. I was in a near-fatal crash more than 25 years ago. Prior to that, the combination of my age (37 at the time), good genes and a pretty active lifestyle meant my body could and would do just about anything I asked of it. While I was physically fit, my mind was clouded by drugs and alcohol such that I was often on auto-pilot. As far as spirituality went… as I said, that was for fools. Although I was in serious imbalance and disharmony, I didn’t know it and would not have cared if I did. After waking up in the hospital five weeks after my wreck, that began to change, but it was slow and extremely difficult.
 

My body, with only some minor limitations, eventually recovered. After getting sober, my mind woke up all on its own, returning to a place of inquisitiveness, curiosity, critical thinking and even assertion that it once was many years prior. Continuing my education supercharged it—of the three, my mind has been healthiest and, for the most part, not stagnant. It has been more stagnant since I retired, but I find it relatively easy to get back to that always new place. These words are an example of that – right here, right now. However, my body has suffered the most stagnation. Over the past two decades-plus, I have gradually become decreasingly active. Spiritually, I have rested on my laurels; I have not pushed its boundaries, or expanded on what it is, means or how it operates.

That brings us full circle. Last week I took measures to remedy that balance and that harmony. Today was but one very small piece of that overall puzzle. I engaged in a physical class that I am deliberately not naming, because the last thing I want is to be inducted into a lifestyle brand or viewed as a new-age convert. It does not matter what the specific movements were; what matters is that I have taken a step outside of what is comfortable, familiar and easy to enter into the unknown. Did I like it? Yes and no; no one likes discomfort, but that is what it takes to get where “there” is. Did I like the activity itself? It is too soon to tell, but I did not hate it, so there is that. Right now, the big deal is that I put myself out there again for the first time in a long time, and that I do like.

And I am not done. Tonight I have another, different activity in a place that is new, around people I have never met before, doing something I have never done before. It’s not to be “bold” and “overcome fear,” although that is a side-effect, it is to repair the rift between my mind, my body and my spirit, to wake them the fuck up and start working together so that I can get this old me moving again to enjoy the years I have left. And, if I do it right, I might just add a few years to them.

Epstein and the Washington (TN) County School Board

   

I'm not big into conspiracy theories. I especially dismiss large-scale ones—such as the “moon landing,” “flat-earth,” “chem-trails” and a host of others—with Occam's Razor. The most likely explanation is the simplest one; the number of people and secrets required to, for example, fake the moon landing is mind-boggling. And impossible. Much more likely, we landed on the moon, just like I watched on TV in 1969.

But some conspiracy theories turn out to be real conspiracies. With some, like the Epstein files, there absolutely is a "there" there. It's bad, it was going on for years and the secrecy involved was off the charts. However, in a way, Occam’s Razor still applies. Too many people had to keep too many big, dark secrets for it to stay secret forever. Still, damage – and lots of it – was done. There's no question that powerful men, and some powerful women, have for years been keeping very dark secrets.

The Epstein files did two things. First, they blew up any logical reasoning that this was nothing more than a conspiracy; the massive amount of evidence, and the ongoing cover-up, proves that. But was this a one-off, an anomaly? Yes, it’s bad, real bad, but how societally ingrained is this behavior? We don’t know the extent just yet, but if we listen to women, it’s not isolated, rare or limited to just one group of the wealthy and powerful. How do we know?

Look no further than Washington County, Tennessee.

On April 2nd, a school board member named Keith Ervin was caught on video leaning into a female high school board member, grabbing her by her opposite shoulder to pull her into him for a “side hug” and said, “God, you're hot. You know that? Hey, where do you go to school at?” The rest of the board either chuckled uneasily or just sat there. It was not subtle. This YouTube link begins at one hour and 16 minutes into the two-hour meeting – it shows the incident that has created so much backlash for Ervin and the board.

Ervin’s defense is as much predictable as it is pathetic. He claimed “hot” simply meant she was “on a roll” with her presentation. He also threw in the tried and untrue refrain that the clip (which has gone viral) is taken out of context, that we must watch the whole two-hour meeting to understand. So I did.

And the context is actually much worse.

For the entire meeting, he wasn't paying attention to a student's performance; he was paying inordinate attention to a high school girl. He was looking at her more than anyone else. He was sitting between her and another board member, but noticeably closer to her. He touched her many times before taking his bold “next step.” And now he’s betting that no one will watch it all, that we will just accept his lame-fuck excuse. And he’s banking on this all fading away before August when he’s up for reelection to a seat he’s held for 20 years.

Many have said, as I or any rational human would: If this was a teenage boy – or any male for that matter - would Ervin have pulled him into a physical embrace and whispered, “God, you're hot, where do you go to school?” If the answer is yes, that he would do that with a boy, well, that is a problem too. He wasn’t giving this girl a “you-go, girl!” he was taking liberties in a post-Epstein world that appears to be, for some, normalized.

So, how did the institution respond? First, they didn’t until there was widespread condemnation. But, after that, in emergency session, they voted to "censure" him. A formal slap on the wrist. They claimed their hands were tied by state law, which is just another way of saying the system is explicitly designed to protect the incumbent power structure. He keeps his seat. And, predictably, this wasn't even his first offense; he was censured for a lewd classroom gesture back in 2009.

Women and girls (and some boys, too) have known about this systemic cloaking for a long time. These are not isolated anomalies. The Epstein files revealed not only how the rich and powerful have been doing what they want with impunity for a long time, the files have also unearthed the truth so many victims have been trying to tell us for a long time. There is a “secret society,” but it is not as hidden as you think. You buy their products; you see them on ballot after ballot. And the system is cooked to let them get away either Scott-free or with just a slap on the wrist. The Epstein files have given us the information we need to set things straight, but first it has uncovered something dark that lurks in the hearts of too many men. They have become emboldened to reveal who they are. In a school board meeting. Recorded, for all to see.