~/~ELIA~\~’s blog

TAKING SOME ME TIME

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:31:50 -0700

TAKING SOME ME TIME
Category: Life

I'm going to be taking some time away from the internet for a while.

I just need some me time - take care y'all while I'm gone.

Be blessed and Live Love!

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Civil liberties group criticizes new FBI authority

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:44:15 -0700

Civil liberties group criticizes new FBI authority
July 2, 2008, Boston Globe/Associated Press
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/07/02/civil_liberties...

Nearly 40 years ago, the FBI was roundly criticized for investigating Americans without evidence [that] they had broken any laws. Now, critics fear the FBI may be gearing up to do it again. Tentative Justice Department guidelines, to be released later this summer, would let agents investigate people whose backgrounds -- and potentially their race or ethnicity -- match the traits of terrorists. Such profiling ... echoes the FBI's now-defunct COINTELPRO, an operation under Director J. Edgar Hoover in the 1950s and 1960s to monitor and disrupt groups with communist and socialist ties. Before it was shut down in 1971, the domestic spying operation -- formally known as Counterintelligence Programs -- had expanded to include civil rights groups, anti-war activists, ... state legislators and journalists. Among the FBI's targets were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and John Lennon, along with members of black [political] groups ... and student protesters. The new proposal to allow investigations of Americans with no evidence of wrongdoing is "COINTELPRO for the 21st century," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union. "But this is much more insidious because it could involve more people. In the days of COINTELPRO, they were watching only a few people. Now they could be watching everyone."

Note: For many disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties, click here.

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My 2 cents on Obama - Well not mine, but I agree with this one

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:03:18 -0700

My 2 cents on Obama - Well not mine, but I agree with this one

(This does not mean I endorse McCain. Frankly, I can not endorse any candidate. I just don't feel comfortable doing that - but facts are facts - and here are the facts.)

This article found online at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20269.htm

Worse than McCain

By Mike Whitney

11/07/08 "ICH" --- - Every four years, liberals and progressives are expected to set aside their beliefs and stand foursquare behind the Democratic Party candidate. This ritual is invariably performed in the name of party unity. It doesn't matter if the candidate is a smooth-talking politician who's willing to toss his Pastor of 20 years overboard for a few awkward comments, or whether he refuses to defend basic civil liberties like the 4th amendment's right to privacy. All that matters is that there's a big "D" following his name and that he shows he's willing to engage in some meaningless verbal jousting with his Republican opponent.

For nearly a year now, the public has been treated to regular doses of Mr. Obama's grandiloquent oratory and his sweeping "Follow me to Shangri-la" promises. These flourishes are usually followed by "clarifications" on the central issues which identify Obama as a center-right conservative with no intention of disrupting the status quo. Political analyst Alexander Cockburn summed it up like this in a recent article on counterpunch:

"There have plenty of articles recently with headlines such “Obama’s Lunge to the Right”. I find these odd. Never for one moment has Obama ever struck me as someone anchored, or even loosely moored to the left, or even displaying the slightest appetite for radical notions, aside from a few taglines tossed from the campaign bus." (Alexander Cockburn, "Could Anyone be Worse than Bush?")

Cockburn is right and most people know it. They simply ignore the facts because the thought of the unstable John McCain in the Oval Office with his stubby fingers just inches from the Big Red Switch is too much to bear. So, they throw their support behind Obama and hope for the best. But Obama has done nothing to earn their vote and there's nothing to indicate that he has any interest in restoring the republic or putting and end to US adventurism. He's just a one-term senator with zero foreign policy experience who doesn't want to rock the boat. That's it. He'd rather keep his position on the issues blurry and rattle off lofty-sounding platitudes than state plainly how he feels. Unfortunately, when he's pinned down and has to give a straight answer, he quickly swerves to the right where he feels most at home.

This concerns the Obamaniacs who worry that behind the rhetorical fanfare, Barak is just an empty gourd; a well-spoken pitch man with no moral core. Could he be another Slick Willie, they wonder; another self-promoting politico as eager to sell out his working class supporters as chase a frisky intern around the Lincoln bedroom? No one knows, because no one has figured out exactly why Obama is running. Does he really want to lift the country from the muck of 8 years of Bush misrule or does he just want to gad about on Airforce 1 and make pretty speeches in the Rose Garden? What really drives Obama? It's a mystery.

But don't be fooled, Obama could turn out to be worse than McCain, much worse. No one doubts that he is brighter and more charismatic than the irritating senator from Arizona. And no one underestimates his Pied Piper ability to galvanize crowds and stir up national pride. But what good is that? Obama works for the same group of venal plutocrats as Bush; a fact that was made painfully clear just last week when he voted to approve the new FISA bill that allows the president to continue spying on American citizens with impunity. Obama is a constitutional scholar; he understood what he was voting for. He was sending a message to his supporters that they don't really matter; that what really counts is the small gaggle of powerful corporatists who run the country and believe the president is above the law. That's what his vote really meant.

So, why vote for him? We don't need a glamor boy to trash the Bill of Rights. Any old autocrat will do. Just pick a name from the "resident scholar" list at the American Enterprise Institute. That ought to do it.

And we don't need another paper-mache president who tries to conceal America's war crimes behind stuffy-sounding pronouncements about the "Islamofacism" and other terrorist mumbo-jumbo. What we need is someone with enough guts and moral fiber to shake up the political establishment, put an end to the wars and covert operations, and clean up Wall Street.

Obama has dazzled the media with his easy manner and his savoir faire, but he's not the right man for the job. He has surrounded himself with ex-Clintonistas who will continue the global onslaught with even greater ferocity than Bush, although much more discreetly.(After all, this is the empire's A Team) And just like Clinton, who bombed the bejesus out of Belgrade for 87 days without batting an eye; Obama will keep the war machine chugging along at full-throttle while he diverts the media with his colorful bloviating and his rock star persona. No thanks.

What the world really needs is a five or ten year break from the United States; a little breather so people can unwind and take it easy for a while without worrying that their wedding party will be vaporized in blast of napalm or that their brother-in-law will be dragged off to some CIA hellhole where his eyes are gouged out and his fingernails ripped off. That's what the world really needs, a temporary pause in the imperial violence. But there won't be any sabbatical under Field-Marshall Obama; no way. As journalist Bill Van Auken points out in his article on the World Socialist web site, Obama may turn out to be the point-man for reinstating the draft:

Obama has "lamented the failure of the Bush administration to issue “a call to service” and “a call for shared sacrifice....There is no challenge greater than the defense of our nation and our values,” said Obama. We “need to ease the burden on our troops, while meeting the challenges of the 21st century," which, according to Obama, will require an "increase US ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.'" ("Obama continues lurch to the right on Iraq war and militarism" Bill Van Auken)

Is that why the political establishment is so enthusiastic about Obama, because they need a better recruiting sergeant than the uninspiring McCain?

No one has followed Obama's rightward drift with greater interest and bemusement than the editors of the Wall Street Journal. They have faithfully chronicled all the vacillating, obfuscating and backpedaling and they've made up their minds; Obama is marching straight towards the welcoming arms of the Republican Party. That's right; he's gradually embracing the conservative platform and abandoning any pretense of liberalism. Two weeks ago the WSJ ran an editorial that summarized Obama's metamorphosis in an article titled "Bush's Third Term":

"We're beginning to understand why Barack Obama keeps protesting so vigorously against the prospect of 'George Bush's third term.' Maybe he's worried that someone will notice that he's the candidate who's running for it.

Most Presidential candidates adapt their message after they win their party nomination, but Mr. Obama isn't merely 'running to the center.' He's fleeing from many of his primary positions so markedly and so rapidly that he's embracing a sizable chunk of President Bush's policy. Who would have thought that a Democrat would rehabilitate the much-maligned Bush agenda?" (Wall Street Journal)

That's fair enough. Obama has changed his position on his "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies". He has wormed his way out of a definite commitment on withdrawaling the troops from Iraq. (which was a real lesson in Clintonian triangulation) He's backed off on his promise to rewrite the NAFTA free trade agreement. He's thrown his support behind Bush's "faith-based" social programs which provide state money for religious organizations. He's even sided with the far-right loonies on the Supreme Court on gun rights and whether to ban the death penalty for rape. (truly outrageous) How can anyone support a candidate who is on the same ideological side of legal issues as Antonin Scalia?

In the past few weeks, Senator Switcheroo has blasted Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while, at the same time, heaping praise on our "good friend" Israel. Obama even has a two paragraph commentary on his campaign web site lauding Israel's devastating attack on Lebanon a year ago which killed 1,500 civilians and reduced much of the country's vital infrastructure to rubble.

Still think the "peace candidate" does not have the warmongering bone fides to do the empire's dirty work?

Think again.

Many of us who have criticized Obama are being dismissed as cynics, but that's nonsense. The truth is that the Obama supporters have projected their own values onto their candidate and are trying to make him out to be something that he is not. They put words in his mouth so they can continue to hold on to the crazy notion that the system really isn't broken and that it can be fixed by simply pulling a lever on election day. This is just the lazy-man's way of ignoring the real work that needs to be done to restore American democracy; the organizing of groups and networks, the building of labor unions and working coalitions, the focussed determination to root-out corruption and entrenched corporate power. The system has to be rebuilt from the bottom-up not the top-down. It'll take a revolution in thinking and lots of hard work. There's no quick fix. Freedom isn't free anymore; deal with it. Voting for Obama and keeping one's fingers crossed, is not a sign of hope. It's a sign of self-delusion.

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US 'Killed 47 Afghan Civilians'

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:24:45 -0700

US 'Killed 47 Afghan Civilians'

This article found online at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20267.htm

US 'Killed 47 Afghan Civilians'

By BBC

11/07/08 "BBC" -- - A US air strike in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday killed 47 civilians, 39 of them women and children, an Afghan government investigating team says.

Reports at the time said that 20 people were killed in the airstrike in Nangarhar province. The US military said they were militants.

But local people said the dead were wedding party guests.

Correspondents say the issue of civilian casualties is hugely sensitive in Afghanistan.

President Hamid Karzai has said that no civilian casualty is acceptable.

Demand for trial

Mr Karzai set up a nine-man commission to look into Sunday's incident.

The commission is headed by Senate deputy speaker, Burhanullah Shinwari whose constituency is in Nangarhar province. He told the BBC: ''Our investigation found out that 47 civilians (were killed) by the American bombing and nine others injured.

"There are 39 women and children" among those killed, he said. The eight other people who died were "between the ages of 14 and 18".

A spokeswoman for the US coalition, Lt Rumi Nielson-Green told the AFP news agency that the force was also investigating the incident and regretted any loss of civilian life. "We never target non-combatants. We do go to great length to avoid civilian casualties," she said.

At the time the US said that those killed were militants involved in previous mortar attacks on a Nato base.

The incident happened in the remote district of Deh Bala, close to the Afghan border.

Mirwais Yasini, deputy speaker for the lower house of parliament, also has his constituency in Nangarhar. ''We are very sad about the killings in Deh Bala. People should be compensated," he told the BBC.

"These operations widen the gap between the people and the government."

He said that those who passed on intelligence to the US military ahead of the air strike should be tried, "as well as those who carried out the bombing".

Mr Yasini demanded that "all operations should be conducted in full co-operation with our security forces in the future".

'Ashamed'

Correspondents say most civilian deaths in Afghanistan are caused by Taleban fighters and other militants opposed to President Karzai and US and Nato-led forces. On Monday a suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul killed 41 people, most of them civilians.

However, foreign troops have also often killed civilians, leading to an erosion of support for their presence in Afghanistan.

Last year a US army spokesman said he was "deeply ashamed" after US marines killed 19 civilians near Jalalabad in Nangarhar province.

Only a few months earlier, a Nato spokesman said that civilian casualties were the main issue for the Nato-led force to resolve.

"I believe the single thing that we have done wrong and we are striving extremely hard to improve on is killing innocent civilians," Brig Richard Nugee said.

President Karzai has been scathing in his criticism over the deaths of Afghan civilians, even summoning foreign commanders in May, 2007 to tell them "that the patience of the Afghan people is wearing thin with the continued killing of innocent civilians".

Two days ago, the Red Cross said that at least 250 Afghan civilians had been killed or wounded in insurgent attacks or military action in the previous six days. It called on all parties to the conflict to avoid civilian casualties.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7501538.stm

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Sad But True

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:17:01 -0700

WAKE UP (Sad But True) WORLD PREMIER VIDEO

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Senate Passes Unconstitutional Spying Bill and Grants Sweeping Immunity to Phone Companies

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:17:01 -0700

Senate Passes Unconstitutional Spying Bill and Grants Sweeping Immunity to Phone Companies This article found online at: http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0709-17.htm Senate Passes Unconstitutional Spying Bill and Grants Sweeping Immunity to Phone Companies ACLU Announces Legal Challenge to Follow President’s Signature

WASHINGTON - July 9 - Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of 69-28 and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president’s unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times. “Once again, Congress blinked and succumbed to the president’s fear-mongering. With today’s vote, the government has been given a green light to expand its power to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the Constitution,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This legislation will give the government unfettered and unchecked access to innocent Americans’ international communications without a warrant. This is not only unconstitutional, but absolutely un-American.” The FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance by allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The FISC will not be told any specifics about who will actually be wiretapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful role for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government’s general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime. A provision touted as a major “concession” by proponents of the bill calls for investigations by the inspectors general of four agencies overseeing spying activities. But members of Congress who do not sit on the Judiciary or Intelligence committees will not be guaranteed access to the agencies’ reports. The bill essentially grants absolute retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that facilitated the president’s warrantless wiretapping program over the last seven years by ensuring the dismissal of court cases pending against those companies. The test for the companies’ right to immunity is not whether the government certifications they acted on were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that certifications were issued, all of the pending cases will be summarily dismissed. This means Americans may never learn the truth about what the companies and the government did with our private communications. “With one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “This bill – soon to be law – is a constitutional nightmare. Americans should know that if this legislation is enacted and upheld, what they say on international phone calls or emails is no longer private. The government can listen in without having a specific reason to do so. Our rights as Americans have been curtailed and our privacy can no longer be assumed.” In advance of the president’s signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court. “This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment.” For more information, go to: www.aclu.org/fisa ###

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The We Campaign - Real solutions to high gas prices

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:41:45 -0700

The We Campaign - Real solutions to high gas prices

This is silly. Once again, we're being held hostage by the big energy companies, and we're paying for it at the pump. Some people think more drilling is going to help, but that sort of flawed thinking is what got us into this mess to begin with. Instead of prolonging our addiction to oil, we need to look beyond fossil fuels and invest in new solutions. It's time to get real about our energy options.

Why remain captive to skyrocketing fuel prices when we can develop an economy based on efficient transportation and clean, free sources of energy (like the sun and wind)?

The We Campaign is about coming together to demand the smart, dependable and reasonably priced energy that we deserve. Energy that will strengthen the economy and stop global warming. Click here to help break our addiction to fossil fuels.

We are a great country -- with fantastic resources -- and we will not be held hostage by dirty energy companies.

Be a voice for real solutions today.

Sincerely,

Cathy Zoi
CEO
www.wecansolveit.org

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Iraq insists on U.S. withdrawal timetable

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:38:11 -0700

Iraq insists on U.S. withdrawal timetable

This article found online at:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20248.htm

By Ahmed Rasheed and Mohammed Abbas

08/07/08 - -BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq will not accept any security agreement with the United States unless it includes dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces, the government's national security adviser said on Tuesday.

The comments by Mowaffaq al-Rubaie underscore the U.S.-backed government's hardening stance toward a deal with Washington that will provide a legal basis for U.S. troops to operate when a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki appeared to catch Washington off-guard by suggesting for the first time that a timetable be set for the departure of U.S. forces under the deal being negotiated, which he called a memorandum of understanding.

Rubaie said Iraq was waiting "impatiently for the day when the last foreign soldier leaves Iraq."

"We can't have a memorandum of understanding with foreign forces unless it has dates and clear horizons determining the departure of foreign forces. We're unambiguously talking about their departure," Rubaie said in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf.

He was speaking to reporters after meeting Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Rubaie said he spoke to Sistani about the U.S. talks, but did not say if the cleric had an opinion on the negotiations. The revered cleric is routinely briefed on key national issues.

"I informed the (clerical leaders) about some of the advances in the talks. There are real problems and difficulties, and we have many roadblocks ahead. There is a big difference in outlook between us and the Americans," Rubaie said.

The Bush administration has always opposed setting any withdrawal timetable, saying it would allow militant groups to lie low and wait until the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq left.

On Tuesday the White House said the talks were not aimed at setting a hard deadline for withdrawal.

"Negotiations and discussions are ongoing every day," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Japan, where President George W. Bush is attending a Group of Eight summit.

"It is important to understand that these are not talks on a hard date for a withdrawal."

PARLIAMENT HICCUP

In a further complication, Iraq's deputy parliament speaker Khalid al-Attiya said lawmakers must approve any deal the Iraqi government reaches and will probably reject the document if American troops are immune from Iraqi law.

It would be virtually unthinkable for the United States to allow its soldiers to be subject to Iraqi law.

Maliki's preference for a memorandum of understanding, which could be an attempt to bypass parliament, is in contrast to earlier talks which have all been leading to the signing of a formal Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).

"Without doubt, if the two sides reach an agreement, this is between two countries, and according to the Iraqi constitution a national agreement must be agreed by parliament by a majority of two thirds," Attiya told Reuters in an interview.

Washington has SOFA pacts with many countries, and they typically exempt U.S. troops from facing trial or prison abroad.

Iraq said last week Washington was showing flexibility on some key issues, which officials said included dropping a demand for immunity for private contractors working for the U.S. government.

Control of military operations and airspace are other points of contention, along with the detention of prisoners.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Farhan in Najaf and Jeremy Pelofsky in Toyako, Writing by Dean Yates, Editing by Catherine Evans)

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The Earth Cries (Thanks Erika)

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:53:53 -0700

A friend of mine passed this news article on to me that just kind of confirms something I have always said. I have always said that science backs up scripture every time they learn something new and this is no exception. First I'm going to share with you the scriptures that I believe are being confirmed then I'll share the news article.

Jeremiah 50: 46
At the cry, Babylon has been taken! the earth shall tremble, and the cry shall be heard among the nations.

Romans 8:22
We know that the whole creation [of irrational creatures] has been moaning together in the pains of labor until now.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Earth's Cries Recorded in Space

Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
SPACE.com Tue Jul 1, 12:33 AM ET

Earth emits an ear-piercing series of chirps and whistles that could be heard by any aliens who might be listening, astronomers have discovered.

The sound is awful, a new recording from space reveals.

Scientists have known about the radiation since the 1970s. It is created high above the planet, where charged particles from the solar wind collide with Earth's magnetic field. It is related to the phenomenon that generates the colorful aurora, or Northern Lights.

The radio waves are blocked by the ionosphere, a charged layer atop our atmosphere, so they do not reach Earth. That's good, because the out-of-this-world radio waves are 10,000 times stronger than even the strongest military signal, the researchers said, and they would overwhelm all radio stations on the planet.

Theorists had long figured the radio waves, which were not well studied, oozed into space in an ever-widening cone, like light from a torch.

But new data from the European Space Agency's Cluster mission, a group of four high-flying satellites, reveals the bursts of radio waves head off to the cosmos in beam-like fashion, instead.

This means they're more detectable to anyone who might be listening.

The Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR), as it is called, is beamed out in a narrow plane, as if someone had put a mask over a torch and left a slit for the radiation to escape.

This flat beam could be detected by aliens who've figured this process out, the researchers say. The knowledge could also be used by Earth's astronomers to detect planets around other stars, if they can build a new radio telescope big enough for the search. They could also learn more about Jupiter and Saturn by studying AKR, which should emit from the auroral activity on those worlds, too.

"Whenever you have aurora, you get AKR," said Robert Mutel, a University of Iowa researcher involved in the work.

The AKR bursts -- Mutel and colleagues studied 12,000 of them -- originate in spots the size of a large city a few thousand miles above Earth and above the region where the Northern Lights form.

"We can now determine exactly where the emission is coming from," Mutel said.

Our planet is also known to hum, a mysterious low-frequency sound thought to be caused by the churning ocean or the roiling atmosphere.

Original Story: Earth's Cries Recorded in Space

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Sexuality and Spirituality: Healing the Split (CAUTION ADULT CONTENT)

nobody@vox.com(~/~ELIA~\~) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:02:08 -0700

Sexuality and Spirituality: Healing the Split (CAUTION ADULT CONTENT)
Category: Religion and Philosophy

This article found online at:

http://www.wanttoknow.info/008/080630_sexuality_spirituality_healing
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ELIA note: although I do not fully agree with exactly everythig in this article, I do think that the author has some helpful views on sexuality in regards to spirituality.
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Sexuality and Spirituality: Healing the Split

"As I continued walking the board, I asked all the participants to raise their hands as soon as I got to a place where they felt they got stuck. In one walk across, every hand in the room, including Sister Greta's, went up. Everyone looked around in surprise – no one more surprised than me. Every one of the forty participants experienced the same paralysis that I had thought was my unique struggle. Everyone in the room acknowledged that they had all thought it was their unique struggle. We were all suffering from a sexuality-spirituality split."
-- Michael Picucci in Healing the Sexuality-Spirituality Split

Dear friends,

The tremendously moving article below reveals that almost all of us have wounds around our sexuality in relationship to spirituality. The creative author gives a powerful, inspiring example of how we can begin to heal the split between sexuality and spirituality that exists in each of us individually, and in our society as a whole. I most highly recommend reading the entire article so that you might experience a taste of this deep healing yourself.

With very best wishes,
Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team

Healing the Sexuality-Spirituality Split
A Weekend to Remember

By Michael Picucci

This story of a powerful weekend retreat tells how the cultural concept of the sexuality-spirituality split came to me. This awareness also fueled my years of research since on common challenges that can be healed more efficiently in a cultural rather than strictly personal context.

The discovery of a sexuality-spirituality split came during a weekend spirituality retreat that I presented in 1984 at Veritas Villa in New York's Catskill Mountains. On Friday evening, I polled the group of forty women and men to determine what areas of recovery they would like to focus on.

A young man in the back of the room sheepishly yelled out, "Let's talk about sex!" Since this was scheduled to be a workshop on "spirituality in recovery" everyone found the suggestion amusing. A raucous conversation took place in the room, after which the group implored me to address sex.

Always up for a good challenge, I agreed to schedule a Saturday afternoon workshop to investigate sexuality in recovery. In 1984, this was more challenging than it is today. Since the weekend had been created to explore spirituality issues, I felt challenged to integrate the two. There was another aspect of challenge that tested me in the fifteen hours I would have to prepare for the Saturday afternoon workshop. My co-facilitator was a Catholic nun named Sister Greta!

A significantly painful aspect of my own internalized sexual-spiritual split was planted by a nun when I was about seven. I had never totally healed from that trauma – talk about synchronicity! Although I knew Sister Greta to be a highly compassionate addictions counselor, I could feel a critical mass building inside. The universe was going to heal me whether I liked it or not.

Friday evening, before I went to sleep, I felt deep within that this situation offered a serendipitous occasion for healing. At that point I still didn't know what to do to create interactive participation around this theme of sexuality within the framework of a spiritual retreat. With all the symbolic transference that Sister Greta elicited, the lingering awareness that she would be observing and participating, embarrassed and unsettled me. It triggered all my unconscious fears surrounding my own split. It was hell!

In the few spare moments I had between facilitating other aspects of the retreat, I observed my experience with sex as it relates to my concept of spirituality in addictions recovery. I decided that I would share my personal experiences with the group as a stimulus for discussion.

As the afternoon approached, I could feel both a fear and a mysterious power building inside of me. At lunch I told Sister Greta how nervous I was discussing sex with her in the room. Of course, I see in retrospect that this was highlighting my own sexual-spiritual split even before I had named it. She fortuitously replied, "Oh, go ahead, go for it Michael! You aren't going to say anything I haven't already heard; and if you do, I look forward to hearing it."

As the session started, I stood in front of the room nervously holding a piece of chalk. Sister Greta was sitting on a piano bench in the back corner. I looked back at her and we both began to laugh, and at that moment it came to me.

I would share with the group my most recent discovery – how I have been separating the concepts of intimacy, sensuality, and sex in my own mind, and how helpful that realization has been to my own sexuality breakthroughs. I darted to the blackboard and put those three words, intimacy, sensuality, and sex, in that order, from left to right at the top of the board, and started discussing the words.

Initially, the group was enlivened though chaotic. They tended to want to lump the words together. I could actually see participants' faces twisted in confusion as they attempted to define these words as independent concepts. When the confusion was well established, I suggested that group members call out words they associated with the word "intimacy." As they did so, I wrote the following words under the intimacy column on the board: "warmth," "communication," "honesty," "caring," "smile," "knowing," "trust," "openness," and so on.

Then we moved to the center column headed by the word "sensuality." As people got silly and awkward they began calling out these words: "touching," "candlelight," "smell," "lick," "biting," "tickling," "music," "whispering," "massage." The list went on and on.

Last, I called for words associated with sex, requesting that we not repeat words already used even though they may have sexual associations. People were obviously embarrassed, as I observed them slyly looking at each other. The presence of Sister Greta was ominous.

One woman in front of the room whispered "penis," and everyone in the room giggled as I put it on the board. Then Sister Greta shouted out "orgasm," and the room went into a roar. I listed it on the board, too. Then the words just started coming: "vagina," "cum" (everyone was curious as to where that spelling originated), "fuck," "suck," "fantasy," "cunnilingus," and a few others. Sister Greta laughed and laughed with a magical healing energy. Without needing to overtly acknowledge or define it, everyone knew that a very special healing was touching us all.

This laugher fueled another insight in me. I was reminded of my own recent thoughts on how difficult it had been to merge my sexuality with an on-going, loving relationship. My fear of self-disclosure relaxed, and I saw how I might bring the group to a second tier of discovery by sharing my own polarizations in these areas for the group to identify with.

For a few more minutes we lingered with our creation on the board. There were still some confused expressions in the room and some quasi-enlightened remarks. Sam, a 22-year-old former marijuana addict shared, "I have never thought of separating those ideas before. To me they are all the same thing. Looking at them separately sort of twists my brain. I don't know what to do with it, but it looks like an important discovery. What should I do with it?"

Allowing this question to provide a transition into the next level of the exercise, I asked Sam if he would join me in the front of the room to help demonstrate an answer to his question. He agreed. Sam and I stood facing the blackboard. I suggested that he was representing the entire group in this exercise.

I already knew that Sam was not married, he did not have a significant other, and he wasn't dating at the time. I asked him, "Sam, if you met someone that you were attracted to, what would you aim toward first, intimacy or sex?" While doing this I paced back and forth in front of the board pointing at the three headings, first in one direction, then the other.

As I "walked the board," I demonstrated the "journey" from each side, first starting with sex (a very common starting point when one has an addictions history), through sensuality and finally to intimacy. Reversing myself, I started at intimacy, moved through sensuality, and then to sex. I then asked Sam and the group to tune into their bodies and feelings and imagine that they were entering a dating situation from both sides, and note their feelings and sensations.

Sam blurted out, "I can't do it. I can't go either way. I can start OK, I can do that from either side, although the intimacy would be new to me. But I don't think I can have both. When I was using pot, it was easy to just have sex. Now that I'm clean, it doesn't work that way. My sponsor says I should date and get to know someone first, but I get terrified and just shut down."

As I continued walking the board, I asked all the participants to raise their hands as soon as I got to a place where they felt they got stuck or paralyzed. In one walk across, every hand in the room, including Sister Greta's, went up. Everyone looked around in surprise – no one more surprised than me. Every one of the forty participants experienced the same paralysis that I had thought was my unique struggle. Everyone in the room acknowledged that they had all thought it was their unique struggle. We were all suffering from a sexual-spiritual split.

I shared some of the other damaging sexual messages that I received early on: that God was synonymous with love, warmth, family, goodness and wholesomeness, and that sex was shameful, disgusting, sinful (mortally so), ungodly and spoken of only in whispers, dirty jokes and sneers. I also told the group that I had uncovered this internalized unconscious split in myself only recently, and that this discovery was finally allowing me to merge these two dynamic, energetic birthrights.

We all have our own version of this internalization. With such a deeply embedded, dualistic concept, how can one possibly bond in love and bring shame-based sex into relationship? The unconscious sends up powerful, though often deceptive, barriers that prevent a fulfilling merger.

A good example of this comes from my own childhood. When I was about seven, I attended catechism class, which was a requirement for all good Catholics. The class was taught by a nun in full habit: an imposing authority figure to a little boy!

The class had about thirty students; in fact, I can remember sitting in the middle of a row on the left. The nun was explaining the difference between venial and mortal sin (venial being the lesser one, while mortal seemed to mean that you would be doomed to eternal hell). With these definitions on the blackboard, she pointed at them and strongly proclaimed, "To touch your private parts, or someone else's, is a MORTAL sin! MORTAL, mind you, not venial."

I was in shock: I was already doomed. Not only had I touched my private parts, but I had explored the private parts of friends during our games of "doctor." It was devastating to me: not even eight years old, and I was going to hell.

I spent many years thereafter trying to repent to God, making deals to not do it again, only to fail in humiliation and sinfulness. I regretfully share that I was 31 years old before I was able to uproot this demon and quiet the internalized havoc that it brought to my intimate relationships.

Patrick Carnes touched on the subject of the sexual-spiritual split in his book on sex addiction, Don't Call It Love. He writes, "Much damage has been done to sexuality in the name of religion. The result inhibits progress on both planes. To heal, start by acknowledging that sexuality is about meaning and that spirituality is about meaning. Search for areas of commonness between the two. Be gentle with yourself about old tortuous conflicts. They are not about you. They never were."

Initially, most adults in recovery do not realize that they have incurred this psychic split, nor do they remember its origins, but they certainly experience the results. You might find the scenario familiar: once you begin to date, you may experience infatuation, even love and eros. Sex may be very pleasurable. Usually within three to six months, bonding begins as you share struggles and joys.

At this point the unconscious polarity begins to haunt the relationship. Since you are not necessarily aware of your past damages or repressed traumas, you may begin to amplify your partner's imperfections in an unconscious attempt to sabotage the relationship. Or you might stay in the relationship and feel inadequate because sex is more work than fulfillment. You may even avoid sex altogether. Simply stated, once bonding occurs, either love or sex must be abandoned. Until we heal this sexual-spiritual split, they cannot seem to live in the same house.

People began to ask, "How can we do it?" In the uncanny, magical flow of that afternoon, I suggested that we move on to the final piece of the exercise and asked for another volunteer. A man in his mid-40s named Gary stood up. His wife Carol, who was sitting beside him, was aghast, laughing and turning red with embarrassment. Someone else roared out, "You can't do it, you're married."

Gary cut through the lighthearted bantering and replied, "Yes I can. I've been married 14 years and sober for 16, and this damn split has haunted every minute of every day of my marriage. I love Carol, but you would never know it by the way I act sexually and intimately. I'd really like to work on this." So we did.

During a break that preceded this part of the exercise, we had moved the chairs from the center and I procured some large 16" x 20" sheets of paper and some felt-tipped marker to make signs. I asked Gary to stand in the center of the room.

I thanked Gary for his honesty and courage to take part in this psychodrama, and then asked him to take a deep breath and relax, look around the room, and notice all the friendly faces. He did so, beginning to smile and relax. I asked him to go deep into his memory and share with us an early message that he received about sex, and to just look within and say whatever comes up without censoring himself. Gary related, "You'll go blind if you play with yourself." I thanked him and wrote that message with a felt-tip marker on a placard.

Then I asked Gary to pick another participant to represent whoever gave him that message, and he selected an older women named Martha. I asked Martha to hold up the placard six feet in front of Gary and face him.

Then I asked Gary for another message that he had received while growing up. He responded, "Women are sluts." I put it on a placard and Gary picked another workshop participant to represent the person who had given him this message. This time he picked a big, strapping man in his late thirties named Mike. I invited Mike to hold the placard in front of Gary next to Martha, and begin to form a circle.

This continued with messages like "Sex is sinful," "Vaginas are ugly," "You are a pervert," "Women should be virgins," and so on until we had eight people circling Gary and holding placards toward him.

The last message he shared was, "You will do it if you love me." As I wrote the placard, I asked him what it meant. He answered, almost crying, "That's what my uncle would say to me when he molested me."

As Gary took some deep breaths to regain his composure he said, "I've never told anyone, not even Carol, about this before. I can't believe I said it." The visual image was quite profound: Gary in the center of the room being encircled by these early messages.

As Gary tried to compose himself further, I encouraged him to stay present and avoid zipping up his defenses. To enhance the experiential component of the vignette, I asked the "message bearers" to turn the placards toward themselves and loudly read the messages to Gary one by one. I instructed them to keep going around and reading them louder and faster until I asked them to stop.

This continued for about two minutes, bringing everyone in the room (especially Gary) to a fevered pitch of discomfort. After stopping the action, I checked in with Gary and asked how he was doing. He replied, "I can't believe I carry all that with me all the time, especially to bed."

I then asked Carol if she would participate, to help us complete the exercise. She said yes, and I asked her to stand about six feet outside the circle facing Gary. I instructed the message bearers to go around reading the messages one more time. Then I asked Carol if all of this made her feel close or distant from Gary. I said, "Does it make you want to move closer or further away?" She replied, "I want to stay right here, I feel like there is a wall between us."

I then invited the group to share. Everyone was enlightened by the realization of how these deep inner messages make sexual intimacy impossible. They could see it and they could feel it; it was crystal clear.

I suggested that we move on to a symbolic exercise that would release these unwelcome, uninvited demons. I directed Gary to slowly, one by one, tell the message bearers, "Take back your lousy message. I don't want it. It isn't mine and it never was." I suggested that as he addressed each one, to tear up the placard and then either throw it on the floor or give it back to the bearer and dismiss them from their role.

After Gary "gave back" the first two messages, I checked in with Carol. I asked her if she was feeling any different. She reported that she felt a little closer to Gary, that he seemed more open and available as he discharged the symbolic carriers of these messages. I suggested that she move closer as she intuitively felt his availability. When all the messages were confronted, Gary just stood there facing Carol and began to gently weep.

As all the walls and barriers melted, Carol gracefully moved towards him. As she did, Gary fell to his knees sobbing, "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I didn't mean to push you away like that. I have been bringing all of these ghosts into bed with us all these years." Carol joined him in a kneeling position. They embraced in a manner that included all of us in their intimate connection.

The wall of shame was gone. The room glowed with a healing spirit. We all spontaneously became more open, affectionate, and tactile. I stood in warm embrace with Sister Greta. Other participants gently touched or leaned on each other as we all bathed in the intimate healing energy generated by Gary's courageous uncovery process. In those moments I experienced transcendence and simultaneously understood what the humanist therapist Carl Rogers meant when he said, "Whatever is most personal is most general."

As the afternoon session came to a close, participants were sharing their insights regarding their own repressed shaming messages, and wanted to know how they could continue this healing work on their own. I offered to share some techniques with them, and we designated time on Sunday morning for this purpose.

I was awed and positively overwhelmed by the grace and power in these various exercises which have since been incorporated into our recovery workshops. I have come to realize that the resolution of the sexuality-spirituality split is a milestone in this vital work.

Excerpted from The Journey Toward Complete Recovery: Reclaiming Your Emotional, Spiritual & Sexual Wholeness by Michael Picucci. For two other highly inspiring articles on healing the sexual-spiritual split, click here and here. And for some fun humor on this topic, click here.

See our collection of inspirational resources at http://www.WantToKnow.info/inspirational

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