tw-sa

The human brain is amazing; managing all of our voluntary and involuntary functions, all conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings; controlling the entire central nervous system.

It needs to be constantly processing in order to keep us safe, to keep us comfortable, to keep us alive. Seeking information is a pleasurable experience for the brain, which makes it easy for us to become addicted to information seeking.

It may seem that without input the brain will stop functioning properly. But, actually it is the best way to optimize the brain’s performance. The brain needs time to rest and recharge. Meditation is not antithetical. Sometimes we need to sit still. Turn off the lights. Turn off the noise. Do nothing for a while.

As we sit without stimulation, the brain will try to create its own. What’s that sound? Is that an itch? Am I supposed to be somewhere else? Remember that thing from the past? Am I tired? Shouldn’t we worry about the future right now? Is that hunger? It will keep seeking and seeking, even manufacturing false information to occupy itself. It takes practice and training to learn to rest a brain.its not easy.

It has been so hard to maintain a meditation practice over these past few months (years), with a brain that wants constant information, and a device in my hand that can pump me up with details every second of the day. It’s too easy to feed that addiction. Lately, I have been stuck in an endless news cycle, seeking out every bit of information on the Epstein story.

I’m looking for something. Something that will satisfy my need to really hear the voices of the victims. Something that will finally give them the opportunity for a loud pronouncement of the whole truth. I’m searching for some information that will clearly expose the people in high places, the predators with deep pockets, and force them to finally pay the price for the years, for the lifetimes, of torture they have inflicted, by abusing, exploiting, manipulating and preying, upon young vulnerable children- Children!

This information seeking is my way of trying to satisfy my brain’s desire for justice for the victims, and a desire for a societal eye-opening, a great awakening, a realization that even though we have all of the news in the world at our fingertips, there is still an underlying system of power and shame which keeps victims from sharing the information necessary to expose and hold their abusers accountable.

The patriarchy and the plutocracy-, men, money and power-, perpetuate these systems of abuse and exploitation. In homes. In neighborhoods. In organizations. In churches. All over the world.

My brain keeps searching for that tiny bit of information that must be out there somewhere, the key to it all, that will satisfy my own sense of justice. To address the betrayal that each survivor of childhood sexual abuse feels, the betrayal that sent many of them on paths of addiction, self-harm, and to early graves. The betrayal I have personally felt my entire life. As a victim. As a survivor. As a keeper of others’ secrets. As the vulnerable, innocent, unharmed, trusting child that still lives somewhere inside of me. That still lives in so many of us.

My brain keeps searching for the information that will somehow set it all right. To make it all right again. Like it was before it was all taken away.

Searching for the real unvarnished truth that won’t sensationalize or politicize people’s pain and suffering. That won’t attempt to turn the perpetrators into some larger than life anomalies, rather than the tiny flawed broken vicious immoral evil purposeful manipulative calculated weak human beings that they actually are/were.

I’m searching for the real truth that will wrap the arms of peace and justice around every traumatized child that still lives in each victim’s central nervous system, and say Yes. This happened to you. We all believe you. We are all sorry. The perpetrators will be criminally charged. And we will all work to fix the world, so that this never happens to any of our children, ever again.

I know in my heart that it is impossible to expose all of the predators in the world. It is impossible to end this sickness of the human spirit that infects people and turns them into dangerous deviants. These underlying systems of abuse and oppression will likely not be dismantled in my lifetime. but my brain will keep searching for the information.

I will not meditate on it, though. I will log off and try to give my nervous system a rest.