Where Do You Get Your Power?

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Luke Ford

I’ve had a lot of good ideas over the course of my life. I’ve had grand visions. I’ve had big dreams. But when I started to do the things I had to do to make my dreams come true, I often found that I was short of power.

I noticed in high school that I kept taking courses that were expressly named for the year below me (as a Junior, for example, I would take Sophomore Literature). I just wasn’t planning and executing right and I kept feeling behind. I think that started when I first entered school — second grade, at age eight. The other kids had been in school for years and were better socialized than me.

As I stumbled along, I found things that gave me fleeting power. I loved reading books. I loved dreaming dreams. I loved blissing out. I loved checking out into my fantasy world.

I took up jogging, eventually completing five marathons at age 12. Occasionally, I’d get an endorphin high and the miles would rush by and I’d feel strong and powerful. I knew I could conquer the world.

At times, I’ve been attractive to women, and my power came from my hold over them. At times, I’ve been on TV and in newspapers and on magazine covers, and that gave me a temporary boost.

When I fell in love with Judaism at age 23, that powered me, on and off, for decades. I was joining God’s Chosen People! Finally, I had made it.

I moved to Los Angeles in March of 1994 and I loved my new city. I had dreamed for at least 15 years of living here and the beauty of the women and the beauty of the climate gave me inklings of power. I told myself that the whole world wanted to live in LA but I had pulled it off.

I’ve had a gift for making and maintaining friendships and these connections gave me power. I knew I often lacked commonsense and so when I could take guidance from the wise, my life ran smoother. At times, families would adopt me and I’d feel connected and whole.

I spent ten years in psycho-therapy and the clarity I gained and the tools I was given empowered me. yet my life didn’t substantially improve. I kept finding intermittent hits of power, but nothing worked for long. I came to age 44 and my life wasn’t working and so I started going to 12-Step programs and I tapped into the power that comes from a genuine relationship with one’s Creator, the power that comes from taking a fearless moral inventory and taking responsibility for the harms I’ve done others and taking steps to right my wrongs and as I faced up to who I was, ‘fessed up to what I had done, stepped up to clean my side of the street, then my life started motoring.

In addition to working the 12 Steps, going to meetings, making and receiving outreach calls, and being of service to others, I found tremendous power from this one 5:30 a.m. phone meeting that for 18 months I let sponsor me (as real sponsors were hard to come by in this program). Every meeting I’d come away with one or two insights to put into practice that day, or to journal on that night, but it wasn’t primarily the information conveyed in the meeting that powered me, it was the vibration that came from listening to strong clear people share their individual messages of recovery. They’d allude to a little bit of the mess but their focus was on the message. It wasn’t the words they said that primarily moved me, it was the power behind their words that pushed me along. It was a power greater than them, greater than the group, it was the Power and by listening on the phone, I got a charge that would often last all day.

Here are things that give me power:

* Specificity
* Accuracy
* Planning
* Goals
* Race, blood and soil
* Religion
* Community
* Friends
* Accountability
* Exercise
* Meditation
* Alexander Technique
* Knowledge
* Mastery
* Family
* God
* Cleanliness
* Organization
* Inspiration
* Music
* Literature
* Art
* Service

Here are things that drain my power:

* Fuzziness
* Losers
* Ignorance
* Numbing out

Plenty of people who want into my life are downers. The more I interact with them, the worse I feel, and it doesn’t really matter how many limits I set or how honest I am about what they’re doing to bring me down. Plenty of people will just suck the life out of me if I let them, so I have to build walls to keep them away. At times, I have to be cold and brusque. I’ve tried to be of service countless times to these lost souls and it has always been useless. It’s apparently done them no good and me great harm.

As I progress in my recovery, people are less mysterious. I find that if I am doing my 12-Step work and other people confuse me, it is because they are trying to con me (consciously or unconsciously) and so I need to keep my distance from them. As I recover from my emotional addictions, I find it easier to speak up when other people invade my boundaries. As I grow up, I take steps to preserve my sanity and my power and I stop letting sickos drain me. I have to have power, man, and now I know where I can get it. Information can be powerful, but power isn’t purely informational. It’s not purely rational. It comes from the great beyond.

Posted in Addiction, Personal | Comments Off on Where Do You Get Your Power?

Does Trump Remind You Of The Pharoah?

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Luke Ford

Howard Kurtz writes in his new book Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth:

But perhaps the most forehead-smacking piece in the Washington Post began with a Passover Seder held by a woman whose guests jettisoned the usual reading of the ten plagues—blood, frogs, lice, and so on—for “Neo-Nazis,” “Fake news,” “Freedom Caucus,” “The American Health Care Act,” and other purported plagues from the Trump administration.

This was said to be a trend among Jews. “For some,” the paper intoned, “the big question has become: Is it right to cast the president of the United States as the villainous pharaoh?” There was no hint that this might be an inappropriate question, to liken an American president to the Egyptian ruler who enslaved the Jews. Not even Passover was safe from the anti-Trump virus.

Imagine for a moment that any of these stories and columns had been written during the last administration. Imagine anchors, comedians, has-beens, and ordinary folks drawing a gusher of positive press for calling Barack Obama a traitor, a liar, a fabricator, and someone reminiscent of Hitler and Pharaoh, and chastising him for presiding over an Easter egg hunt. Those critics would have been diagnosed with Obama Derangement Syndrome. But in the Trump era, it was a sure-fire ticket to good press.

Posted in Journalism | Comments Off on Does Trump Remind You Of The Pharoah?

‘Here’s a graduating class of Aboriginal Australian doctors. Each was the recipient of a scholarship.’

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Luke Ford

They look full-blooded aboriginal to me! (Hat tip)

REPORT: UNSW Medicine celebrated a milestone today with the graduation of six Indigenous doctors – the highest number in a single year.

The graduations cement UNSW’s place as a leader in Indigenous medical education. Most of the group are the first in their families to attend university and credit UNSW’s unique Indigenous support program and scholarships with helping them to realise their ambitions.

Two of the graduates, Khyarne Biles and Tyron Clayworth, had scholarships provided by The Balnaves Foundation, and all six students received residential scholarships from the Shalom Gamarada program to live on campus.

Biles will return to Dubbo, her hometown, to begin her medical career. She is passionate about improving Indigenous health, and hopes to train as an obstetrician or paediatrician serving remote areas of far west NSW.

“I am an outgoing, hardworking and proud Aboriginal woman who is committed to making a difference to the health outcomes of my people,” says Biles.

Graduate Murray Haar – a Wiradjuri man – started his journey to medical school at UNSW in 2006 when he attended a Nura Gili Winter School, which introduces high school students to the world of tertiary education.

“The support and friendship of my fellow Indigenous medical students had a resounding impact on my ability to succeed through the program – we encouraged one another through some very tough and trying times and carried each other to the finish line,” says Haar, an aspiring psychiatrist or pain medicine specialist who will do his internship in the Albury-Wodonga region.

UNSW launched its Indigenous medical entry scheme in 1998, the same year Dr Kelvin Kong, Australia’s first Aboriginal surgeon, graduated. He had campaigned for greater recruitment of Indigenous students while at UNSW. When Kong started practising, he was one of only 20 Indigenous doctors nationwide.

There are currently 49 students enrolled in the medical program at UNSW – the highest in Australia and a significant proportion of the 310 Indigenous medical students studying nationwide.

Faculty Dean Professor Peter Smith says: “This is an inspiring day for UNSW Medicine as we stand beside these six Indigenous graduating students and look forward to watching them step into the next phase of their lives as doctors. And we know there will be many more of their peers to follow, supported by these valuable scholarships that are showcasing UNSW as a leader in the field.”

The Chair of Aboriginal Health at UNSW and co-founder of the Shalom Gamarada Ngiyani Yana scholarship program, Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver AM, says: “Each student has at some stage been a residential scholar at Shalom College and flourished, overcoming the challenge of time away from family and friends to pursue medicine. Without this scholarship program, many of the students would not have been able to study at UNSW – simply because their financial resources would have precluded living on campus or nearby.” There are currently 28 Indigenous students at Shalom College.

Posted in Aborigines | Comments Off on ‘Here’s a graduating class of Aboriginal Australian doctors. Each was the recipient of a scholarship.’

Reality TV show follows black-Jewish couple to the chuppah

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Luke Ford

When Jews adopt black babies, the reaction they get from fellow Jews can shock them. Many Jews, particularly the more traditional, do not believe that a black can ever really be Jewish.

Most traditional Jews, I suspect, think that a Jew who pairs up with a black, even a black Jew, is severely damaged.

From Times of Israel:

NEW YORK — I find great joy in seeing non-Jews benignly jest and jape at Jewish customs and stereotypes. When they kinda think they know what a Bar Mitzvah is or when they start throwing the hard Chet sound around where it doesn’t belong. I don’t think I’m alone in this, and I think other ethnic groups feel the same way. (My unscientific proof: one semester I roomed with an Indian-American who would lose his mind whenever Apu would show up on “The Simpsons.” And if it was a particularly Apu-heavy episode, the phone would be ringing off the hook as he and his pals called each other, doubled-over. It was great.)

It’s this aspect, and this aspect alone, that held my interest in Lifetime Network’s “Kosher Soul” for as long as it did. Whereas most reality television would have me tossing the pillows on my couch in a furious search for the remote after thirty seconds, “Kosher Soul” held my attention for at least 10 minutes. Considering that each episode clocks in at only 20, that’s not quite the disaster you might think.

Miriam Sternoff is a cheery, warm, under-40 New York Jewess transplanted to Los Angeles (it happens). When we meet her in the first episode of “Kosher Soul” she is engaged to an African-American comic from South Carolina named O’Neal McKnight. Their love for one another is true and delightful and manifests itself for our viewing pleasure right there on their couch, where they zip and zing one another like a Greek Chorus commenting on their own lives. What’s fascinating is how they both fit in the box of their own ethnic stereotypes, but also frequently burst out. (It’s almost as if, gasp, they are their own people.)

O’Neal is a performer (and, while the show is very vague about the specifics, used to work for some heavy hitters in the music business) and is as representative of mainstream, affluent culture as anyone. This isn’t to say he isn’t in touch with his African-American history, but he’s hardly a dazed kid from the ‘hood.

Miriam has a bit of a taste for the finer things, but anyone expecting JAP-y Jeannie Berlin from “The Heartbreak Kid” is going to be disappointed. Her trip to the New Age mikveh is pure Southern California not Safed. She’s very funny, but a lot of that is playing the straight man, setting up O’Neal for the killer punchline. They really are a great fit.

Posted in Blacks, Jews | Comments Off on Reality TV show follows black-Jewish couple to the chuppah

Discombobulated By The Red Pill

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Luke Ford

Comments on my recent video:

* Speaking of being discombobulated, my first year of the red pill consisted of me losing a job, flunking out of school, failing to make payments, alienating my family, losing what little friends I had left, devastating my physical health, plants dying from neglect, etc. While some people can look down the rabbit hole and then go about their day, I could not. I could not look away from what was unfolding before me. It was much like the atmosphere of the 1st movement of Schubert’s 8th symphony. Still I can hardly say the red pill has ruined my life for I was not content with myself prior to it. I did not know who I was and where I stood in the world. Now that I have an understanding of the world I can finally move forward. With my prior life being utterly demolished, I can now wipe the slate clean and start anew.

* I am about Casey’s age, I really feel for him, almost all of his concerns come from the indoctrination he knows his children will receive at school, my advice would be to homeschool. Many are doing it now and it doesn’t come with the stigma it used to. I have 9 children and those old enough for schooling have all been homeschooled. They still receive indoctrination but you are much more able to counter it.

Posted in Alt Right | Comments Off on Discombobulated By The Red Pill