Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M.
“Devastation” by Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. — June 12, 2016
Devastation, heartbreaking, tears, and deep disappointed only begin to describe what we are all feeling in our community. Distance does not matter, what happens to one happens to us all.
As we search our hearts and minds trying to understand such a hateful act we may want to point our finger and try to reason why. Hate, killing, and violence have no reason and no logic to it. Part of our pain is trying to understand something that seems so illogical. Seeking safety in our minds we think if we can find an answer we will be safe. To hate enough to kill or mane is not a reality that most of us can comprehend.
This act of violence is not an action ever condoned by any religious sects. It has nothing to do with being a Christian or a Muslim. This was an act of self-loathing, fear, and mental illness. Religion plays no part in acts of violence. Acts of violence that are perpetuated in the name of God, Mohamed or not spoken as in Eloyem are not religious acts, but rather acts of individuals who are full of fear and self loathing. When the mind of an individual sleeps in fear of his or her emotions and longings it reacts in hate and violence.
What is needed now is an extraordinary approach to mind and consciousness that allows us to view our past and future from our current position. I do not know the solution to the hate and violence perpetuated on our brothers and sisters in Florida. I am aware that the sick consciousness of an individual was the progenitor of the situation and there for must contain the answer to the problems at hand. Like all problems the answer is contained within the problem itself.
Unlike the governor of Texas who quoted this morning you reap what you sow NO, I mean NO religious leader condones this type of violence and hate. We are at a time of watershed in our history. This is a time when all religions have supported the right to freedom beyond their ideas about our life styles. Yes they may not agree with our life, but they have NOT sought to kill and destroy us. Every congregation in Portland stands with us in our sorrow and grief over this terrible time in Florida.
Any of us with a smidgen of conscious awareness are cognizant that violence doesn’t solve the problem of violence. The violence and terrorism are not situated within any one group or person but rather in the collective consciousness. In the herd consciousness we find the need for separateness and destruction. The question of survival in herd consciousness deals with dominance, power, and control of food sources and territory. The very word terror shares a root word with territory. This in itself is a hint to what terrorism is really about.
It is my experience any place in our private and public lives that contains violence, terror, and trauma is a place of contradiction. A paradox is a place where in great leaps in awareness may be accomplished. An experience of metanioa (a great change in mind/thinking) and the Buddhist concept of the “tulpas” (thought form) can happen while contemplating profound duplicity. Paradoxes hold both the problems and the answers.
How can an act of violence preserve peace? How can power bring power under control? Two opposing and contradictory concepts, duplicity, we use violence to bring peace and yet violence is the very deed that breaks peace. In the study of consciousness we find those places in our personal lives where we have an opportunity to understand the true meaning of power and control by examining the repulsion and addiction to violence and terror. We search for the contradictions in our thinking, beliefs, and actions.
For me the real question/problem becomes one of consciousness. How do I personally work with my consciousness to affect the whole of collective unconscious? Where and what is the paradox? And what do the riddles mean in this situation at a global and personal levels?
Ordinary answers don’t seem to satisfy the push I feel of mind unfolding. A small intuitive whisper keeps whispering, “go further and understand more.” The violence of terrorism has only one answer in my thinking and that is one of consciousness. What is your intuition telling you? Is there a whisper to go further, understand more at this point in your life? I do believe that as we clear our consciousness we establish the basis for world peace…for peace and love in our GLBT family. like the ants, each of us plays a part in the collective consciousness.
We are not outside of the collective consciousness nor are we totally defined by it. Our being and consciousness are a matter of our viewpoint, how we see and experience life. Do we add to the world terrorism by our ego needs of greed and power? Are we capable of loving even the dirtiest faced child and the worst offender of peace? Is it possible to love those who lie to us and take us to places that we don’t want to go?
Peace and the answers to gaining a lasting peace are the seeds in each of our consciousness. Listen to that intuitive voice… go further, understand, and give more. Only through inner work does it seem possible to gain the peace we all seek. There is no ONE answer but an answer in ONE and understanding we are of one spirit, one force, one higher mind, truth, God, and LOVE.
Stand tall and let your rainbow flag fly for LOVE, compassion, and consciousness for it is this that will make us stronger and less fearful.
“Economic Reset…Part One: Truth or Dare” by Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. — May 25, 2016
[This is a beginning of a series for the PQ monthly (Portland Queer Monthly). It will appear in the pride Issue.]
In 2007 when I was on the PABA board we received a piece of information that changed the way we looked at business. The information came from the national GLBTQ Business Association. GLBTQ professionals and business people (around 40%) were in the top 30% of the country’s earning power. This tidbit of information is one of the reasons our community, across the country, has been able to change laws and benefit from greater equality.
Money talks. Even today stores such as Target, Walmart, as well as Banks, and large manufacturers know that a substantial amount of their business comes from our community. Our community, includes our friends and allies in general who help push the tides. As a community we are a force to be reckoned with. In many ways we are like a tsunami best to get out of our way because the waves are changing the very face of our land.
This is all good news, and it means we as a national community can do something else. We can change the inequality in pay and opportunity. Not just for our community but for all of those outside of the community. It does us little good to stay insular and separated as a group. It is the integration into the general population that is the real test of our Equal Rights. It is only when we are allowed full use of all facilities that we are living Martin Luther Kings dream for all people. No more separate bathrooms, no more ghettos, homeless youth and health insurance that does not cover Transgender needs.
We have the power to reset the economic growth of this country. A grass roots evolution/revolution whereby we use the power we have to become fully integrated into the well being of our nation and hopefully the global world.
The science of quantum physics tells us that we are all connected. Our actions as individuals have an effect on those around us and those we may never know. The true lesson of the 21st century is that what is done to one is done to us all. None of us are free, healthy, and loved until we all are. Yeah, yeah I know sounds a little to altruistic, but then there has never been a revolution whose ideals didn’t seemed out of the reach of us common folks.
Truth is we are responsible for each other. We are responsible for the environment the lack of equal pay and opportunity. Until each of us dares to accept the responsibility none of us can move forward where our children, our friends’ children, the world’s children are truly free to live a life where they are free of hunger and want, where they have an opportunity to learn and create. A society who doesn’t look to the future, include everyone in its opportunity is psychotic in its actions.
We must dare to change the consciousness of our world. To become mindful of all peoples, need to have food, clean water, and clean air. These very basic needs in all humanity are neglected by all of us who have them. Abraham Maslow’s idea of hierarchy of humanity is that without the basics needs of survival we can’t be without violence, nor reach for social equality, intellectual curiosity, and self-integration through self knowledge. Our world is at a place of watershed in history. We are the tsunami that is building and ready to break through. If you can look at the Truth and dare to look at yourself and our community you have taken the first step.
This is a series. Look for more specifics on what can be done next month.
“Mother’s Love, The Ultimate Intimacy” by Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. — May 7, 2016
Many years ago I was very focused on the roles of the binary genders. A marriage that was failing and loving my neighbor (a woman) was driving me to divide my mind. I kept feeling if I could understand what a woman was I would be happy.
It would take another 8 years before I began to understand and accept my own nature. Lord knows I fought it. As I accepted my self and my androgyny, an amazing thing happened. I fell in love for the first time with an adult. The birth of my first child had taught me about love and the eternal flame in us all, but this was an adult love. I was filled with joy, sexual expression, and acceptance. I became attached to her in a way I never knew was possible. I felt her when we were apart, and knew her every mood. She in turn did the same with me. We melded in a way poets talk about. To me she was every women, every being that had ever existed. Out of our love an intimate friendship grew. We developed a deep caring for each other and the world of others. I learned to be a true mother.
In many ways I gave up all sense of gender and became something different. The many roles we accept as beings no longer existed in my life. My mind twirled as a Sufi dancing, in doing so shed all the old concepts of what I needed to be for what I was. I was eternal in my expression of my art of existence. And to me this is the true lesson of motherhood.
It does not take a womb to experience being a mother. Motherhood is about the infinite ability to accept our existence. There are no black or white states of being only life unfolding as one. Motherhood is about advocating for all life. It is about helping to birth the beauty and love we all carry. When you are a mother, you bring to life all that is. Your love of humanity is not judgmental, nor is it limited by gender or roles you might accept.
A mother has no gender, no role other than an intimate connection to all life. To be intimate with another, be it a friend, lover, or child we must know who we are. It begins with the knowledge of self and understanding our consciousness, the experiences we have had and how they influence our life. To accept a hug, or a touch we must let go of our fear of our self and being known. The duplicity we live with all the time is; wanting to be known is a spiritual way (not religious) and our fear we will not be worthy or accepted as we are.
The story of Adam and Eve’s is the archetype about this kind of fear and shame. They hide from God their deeds and nakedness. And of course because they hide they are thrown out of the Garden of Eden. You do not have to be religious or believe in a God to understand what this means. As young babes we are taught that there is good and bad and when we transgress we become fearful. We feel our souls, innermost being is not good and react in fear cutting our self off from the Garden or that sense of love and intimacy.
We are all mothers in the sense that we have an opportunity to give to each other the love and sense of security we need. It is simple, an acceptance of each other as good and loving beings. We exist in this moment not by accident, but by a greater sense of finding one another.
Celebrate the mother you carry within. The ability to nurture, care, and be intimate with all life. We are a great gathering of loving and carrying people who are together in the twilight waiting for the stars to shine.
“The End of Wanting” by Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. — April 29, 2016
When I was 13 I desired to know why the world was as it is. In my 20s I desired to be loved and adored and found to be worthy of having a good life. By my 30s and 40s I felt the desire to leave a legacy… something to be remembered by. These moments of desire came with epiphanies. Epiphanies came as moments when I had insight into a kind of cosmic answer of order. Like the moment I realized I could love all life that I was not confounded to box called love, given to me in my youth. It was when I realized to be loved I must love myself first.
When my children passed I wanted another epiphany, a moment of meaning and relief from the pain. No amount of meditation or prayer brought it to me. Each time I dwelt on the reasons I was filled with further pain. Walking down 8th Street in the village in NYC it finally came. There was no meaning; there was no insight and no relief from pain. There were no shooting stars or great symphonies playing in my mind or life. No moments of blindness in the realization. There was a quiet letting go. A simple quiet tear fell, this was all there was to life. What I was willing to make it. If there was a higher source of love and being it dwelt in my muddled mind waiting to be let out.
When I realized only I could give meaning to my life. I stopped desiring that which had always been readily available. I stopped desiring to know, to be loved, and have relief. For the first time in my life I had a moment of true piece. I was no longer thinking in a binary way, but rather knew all that was subsisted within the realm of my ability to think. In my thinking there was no longer right or wrong in a traditional manner, good or bad, white or black, but rather an infinite shades of Truth permeating my whole universe. I no longer felt the need to rectify my existence or try to validate my family or my life.
In short I stopped desiring and wanting and started living. I started being, just being. Nothing is more peaceful more comforting than just being. No need to want or desire something more than what has been and is. When I look back I know I would not change my life. As I grow older there is a comfort in knowing I just am. No need to judge my life or contribution to the world, no need for a legacy, no need to know there is something beyond this state of consciousness.
When we be let go of the fear of being neutral of needing to desire, know, and want we begin a life journey in a way that is unpredictably. We give up thinking either or and let go of our binary way of thinking. This leads us to a greater peace, a greater moment of existing in afear free moment of just being.
Perhaps the greatest realization of all is the moment we grasp death may be the largest epiphany of all.
From Sexual Fluidity @ 2016
“Unsung Women Heroes, the Butterfly Effect” by Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. — March 4, 2016
This is a story about women. Women we don’t know, whose names never appears in headlines of newspaper, nor are they considered hero activists. Women no matter what their gender identity, sexual preferences, or station in life, have accomplished much setting us free from the binding tapes of our past.
Celebrating Women’s History month, I find myself flooded with words that DON’T convey the true feelings I have about women who have passed through my life. The paternal grandmother of my children, who was the first women to serve as an assistant auditor at the FED in NYC without a degree, (actually the first women ever).
The friend that taught me I could speak in front of others with confidence. She gave me voice. I am not talking about voice to speak of freedom, but rather a voice to say I love you, and I care for you. She probably will never know how she changed my life and many of the women I know.
And there is the transgender woman who everyday rode the bus with me down Fifth Avenue in NYC. Elegant and proud, she showed everyone the beauty of being her self. A true hero to every life she touched.
The Mormon wives’ who found themselves in love with one-another. They left their husbands and children, came to Denver to take seminars in freeing themselves from their past beliefs. Returning to Utah they became the unnamed beacons of light for others seeking freedom.
Women’s history is not just about changing laws and rules, but rather how women have changed the consciousness of us all. Before a law can be changed, the consciousness must change surrounding the law. Quantum physics tells us that there is a connection between us all and that we are intrinsically linked. We can be a million miles apart and we will either mirror or reject (depending upon the action of those we know) the movement and thoughts of others. Physicists tell us that the electrons in the cells of our molecular structure can be a million years old or a million from the future.
Every consciousness action that unfolds to a greater and more human future affects us all. Those electrons in China, may well be residing in our molecules this very moment. We know molecular structure is renewed every seven days. Why is this important? Because it tells us our actions and thinking today are transmitted at a very core level to those we have never met. It tells us that our deeds, actions, and love must be for those who are not yet born.
Through freedom of thought, expression, and life we are bound to one another. As we drop a pebble into the great lake of life it sends waves through the whole lake, announcing the presence of life. Women’s history is about life. It is the mothers, daughters, heroes, and silent majority that strive to make sure all life is looked at as sacred.
Women have built the altar of tomorrow of love, strength, caring, and embracing ourselves as beautiful expressions of all life. We are the Goddesses of life. Who-so-ever (no matter the gender identification) embraces the feminine energy is a Goddess and a creator of our universe.
Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. on education and freedom — May 9, 2015
Neither education or freedom makes us happy. We don’t become happy because we are free (if we are) and we don’t become happy if we are educated, (if we are). However, education may be the means by which we know we are happy. It opens our eyes and ears to the delights that are lurking in our world awaiting our recognition.
One freedom is of importance and that is the freedom of the mind. Education offers assurance and confidence to walk the path our educated mind presents.
The Prosperos Sunday open meeting May 10th at 11 AM PDT. … free and inspiring on education and how it frees the mind.
Watch Face book for a link on go to meeting and/or telephone number for call in participation… you can also go to www.theprosperos.org for more information.
“Thank you for my clubfoot” by Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. — January 16, 2015
