4 a.m. journal

The morning after the fledgling men's group meeting i was fortunate enough to wake half an hour before my four a.m. alarm, in order to journal before work four more pages of evolving clarity, which began:

Men's groups are for me like an addiction, triggering a desire for more: more masculinity, passion, pushing, power, dominance, purpose, camraderie. I have found in life it's better to leave most needs unmet, in order to leave the excesses of the personality behind.

Italians don't do well in these settings: such groups ask for an "authentic" expression of personal self, which for us does not exist outside of the real. This is due to our inherent wretchedness, which only other italians understand, but which gets projected out as its opposite--love--precisely amidst the pressure of the real, the demands of life.

This is exactly why the new age assertion that "there are no have-to's in life" does not work! Have-to's are the saving grace of life for this man, having forged all that is useful and truly enjoyable in my world of milk crates and money, homeless initiatives, poetry and prayer. Without such have-to's, particularly those in which the inner and outer worlds meet, life has no rudder. On this soul level, there are no men and women.

Now, making sense of conpiracies and peace-work are on my plate, the soul's current have-to's. Such awkward forays, in their honesty, at least stoke hard-won initiatives for holistic well-being, divinity meditation and the seeking of personal power precisely for non-egoic purposes, such as finding true peace and justice work based on a more accurate assessment of the true political landscape.

I am enjoying a sense of acceptance in finding the right relationship to the world of conspiracy, neither obsessing nor ignoring it, but utilizing it to find appropriate responses to the world's violence. Realizing the cultural roots of my alienation to conventional viewpoints has been key. Most americans think "oh there can be no such thing as a ruling elitist overclass pulling so many strings behind the scenes," and thus take news reports as reflecting some objective reality. A few americans who have taken up the conspiracy viewpoint react from what seems to me an equally violent "buy gold and grab your guns" approach.

Southern italians--having been at the mercy of a thousand years of papal authoritarian nonsense, crusades and inquisitions, mafia social control, invasions, financial manipulations, and the like--have a slightly different take! So do post-nazism germans...and for that matter post-communist propaganda-world russians, war-weary latin americans, and most of the people of the planet--none of whom are represented in the news. I am imagining that amidst the recognition of the a priori acknowledgment of both self and others' right to exist, there is a more realistic appraisal available of one's choices, power and obligations...