Islamic Radicalization Continuum - from the book Mass Muslim Immigration at Kindle

Nana's House, the Lemon Tree - Fictional and non-fictional short story

Nana’s house is a short story about an Arizona family enduring the political storms of SB 1070, the economic hardships of finding work and the daily stress and multi-cultural challenges found in most Hispanic homes living in the Phoenix metro area and exposed to different dynamics that are related to immigration, basic household living, cultural clashes and festivities, life, death, sorrow and imprisonment of family members associated with street or prison gangs.

The lemon tree is an analogy of the bittersweet fruit that exists in every household that endures the daily anxieties and struggles of a minority family living during troublesome times and dysfunctional elements of raising kids in the poor side of town and making sure they finish school and do something productive with their lives.

The Zest of Water

The Zest of Water

The Lust for Water does not resist temptation

A human’s lust for thirst is never a sin

The feel of water is often soft as it falls out of the sky

As it was never meant to harm you

The strength of water is bound by laws of nature

To give you what you truly desire inside your soul

Because it is true to nature and all its power

It can shift your moods from rapid thinking to a chilling slow

Water always returns back to its true form or shape

It is granting your lust for life, and is endlessly changing

It can find you love, grief or sorrow or joy

For it does not lack the desire to please or disappoint you

The zest of water brings endless passionate desires

It fulfills an endless life of enrichment to soothe your soul

Whether you are letting it go, or bringing it close to you

It is always constantly changing by letting it flow

Water can bring you enrichments of life or cause a sudden death

It does not cling to either without a special purpose

It finds its own level and essence in life as far as we know

By forever and never letting things go without a reason

So do not cling to water for too long as it may drown you

Even though its ecstasy is eternally giving

Like the sun, the heavens and moon above

It permeates all living things around us light or night

And when things eventually die, the water remains

It teaches us reason and purposes under the stars of heaven

It reasons with us that all things that are born shall die

Yet, when it is all said and done, it is never really over

Water is here for us, fulfilling our ego

As it fills our body and soul with vibrations and ripples for living

Sinuous Expressions

Sinuous Expressions of a Mystery Woman – an Unusual Attraction

It came to pass my ears heard a song coming out of the dense jungle. Surely, this was my imagination.  The song was mesmerizing like the rhythm of the rain, and its sinuous melody handled my heart and mind with love and curiosity. Surely, it was not safe to enter the density darkened foliage without a guide to help me stay on the path and not stray away from civilization.

Once again, my will was formed by my own curiosity, as my footsteps hastened towards the sounds of laughter and joy. My ears were blazingly hot from the desire to find the source of this sinuous expression of music, while my body felt the impact of the pouring rain steadily falling on my head. Mysterious visions were forming in my imagination. It was like I took a drug or something intoxicating.

Certainly, my heart was pounding faster, seeking the satisfaction of the impending bond of the unknown with deep anticipation. For once in my life, I felt alive. There was a strong reincarnation deep inside of me that caused this sinuous melody to move me like I never moved before.

With the sounds of a strange and never heard before melody closing within with every step I took, I drifted away into an imaginary world of romance. There it seemed, I found an unusual persuasive passion, strumming my soul along with the beat of the jungle now wide open as the rain clouds began clearing and showing me the clarity of the night under the heavens and moon above.

There was silence, complete silence as the rhythm had been drowned out to voice. Voices that invited me to sit with them and retire for the night. Fully awakened at midnight, I stared up to the stars and felt a blessing come over me as the stars twinkled brightly as if they were saying I was home, I was home.

Sometime early morning, I awoke with a beautiful woman by my side. Her jade green eyes flashed announced herself as a goddess of love and beauty. My heart, softly beating and nearly still, told me she was the one, she was the one. Flashing her stunning smile, she held my hand as she spoke to me softly.

Melodious and rhythmically vibrations responded to these enhanced ambiences, drowning out my past and only envisioning my future. Surely, such a captured moment of romance would not last forever, it never does or had, as I had experienced it at best, last very long.

This curvaceous woman only added to the mystery of what was happening. Seeking an answer, I whispered to her softly in her ear; “what am I doing here.” Her smile was captivating; her voice was made of silk. Her mere presence as she gazed into my eyes, was that of a beneficent flower that had the power to confer harmony, melody and symmetry to take my love for her to a spiritual elevation and joy beyond anything I had ever experienced before.

These heavy cosmic rhythms personified our romantic interlude and emotions. Her presence the night before was like an ascending star coming down like an angel from heaven. An angel who wanted to be loved and held by me, and only me.

Somehow, at the end of the second day, this special moment had turned into rare occasion of peace and harmony inside of me. For once in my life the stars, universe and the earth, wind, rain and fire, all had come together and coincided to bring me the most beautiful woman I have ever met, declaring my soul completely full with human contentment and desires.

Setting Boundaries

Setting Boundaries with Difficult People

 

Tim Richardson

Life is not as complicated as we make it when we follow or establish some reasonable boundaries in our lifestyle, behaviors or choices. Boundaries are not about making threats or ultimatums. This is a process that determines choices, and consequences for good or bad decisions made. One cannot function in a wellness state of mind without boundaries.

Boundaries are space setters. It is an imaginable or intangible limit imposed between you and another person either in personal or professional relationships. What makes boundaries difficult to adhere to or follow is the fact that they are guided on your morality or values and not identified clearly by a razor wire fence or stakes in the ground telling you where you should go and how you should proceed. This places all the responsibilities on you, the gatekeeper of your mind and heart. Whether or not you cross that line and open that forbidden gate is entirely up to you.

Setting boundaries are invisible arrangements of rules which ensure your trustworthiness as well as those of others. Boundaries serve as tools for protection as well as comfort. It is a simple way of taking care of yourself in life. Good boundaries don’t always come easy and have to be learned the hard way sometimes. It can be easier if you could watch others cross boundaries and see what happens to them when they do but it just doesn’t work that way.

Therefore, the way you grow up sets up these boundaries and hopefully you learn from your mistakes and not repeat them as you define their consequences in your life. If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, then chances are you have not learned how to set a boundary or even really know what it is.

Learning to set our own healthy boundaries is an exercise in personal freedom. It means getting to know ourselves and increasing our awareness of where we stand and what we stand for. It means letting go of the unhealthy things or people in our lives so that we can grow into the healthy person that we were meant to be.

How to set boundaries requires the ability to communicate and communicate without blaming or lying about the circumstances, emotions or the impacts. Avoidance is not conducive to setting these parameters in your life and the better you detail your feelings, expectations and perspectives, the more effective these boundaries serve your purpose in life.

It is impossible to set boundaries without setting consequences. If you are setting boundaries in a relationship, it is important that your reactions and interactions are consistent with your values and expectations and if the other person(s) disregard your attitudes, then you need to confront them and tell them you cannot or will not tolerate such abuse of your values and not put up with it without taking the appropriate action to either redirect the relationship or terminate it.

A Reflection of chances and visions

A Reflection – Chances

More than a quarter of a century ago, I chose a profession that was considered to be the lowest rung on the criminal justice ladder. Hired on as a prison guard at a Santa Fe prison in New Mexico, just a few years after the second worst prison riot in the country had occurred, I learned the hard way that chance is the only legitimate way to prepare the mind.

I quickly learned that inside prisons, nothing just happens. There are many “flashes of insight” that warns us of the things that happen. It is by these insights, these precious moments of vision and understanding that produces the proper preparation that is the key to a successful career.

It is true, leaders must have vision and keen intuitive abilities to sense the presence of danger as well as calm. Under some of the best prison employees I trained to become a correctional officer and step up from being called or recognized as a prison guard.

This training, some formal and some very informal in nature exposed me to numerous key challenges for self-development and growth of the profession. At the same time, I was training, I learned to pay attention to my mentors’ instincts and intuition. It appeared they learned how to react to adversity or danger. I even took a formal education to seek that elusive degree in criminal justice.

The ability to synchronize feelings and emotions along with knowledge stepped up my abilities as well as those around me. After a dozen years of working in uniform, I transitioned from the line to the desk. Certainly, a step I have no regrets or qualms with as they helped me proliferate and promote those principles and ethics taught to me at the school of hard knocks.

My decision to leave the line for additional responsibilities as an administrator were cultivated by the position that required duties and responsibilities to ensure the safe and secure operation of an adult prison. It was true that many tasks and duties required were similar to the activities I was already doing.

Prison management is not and should never be performed in an evenly remote fashion. It requires a hands on approach that should focus on public and staff safety foremost.

The administering of duties and assure compliance in a very complex criminal justice field is critical to law and order. It also encompasses the very realm of human and civil rights that should never be ignored or trampled upon.

Currently, I get extreme satisfaction of my retirement and consulting in the business of prison best practices and offer my skills, knowledge and abilities to make the profession better and safer.

One could say that retirement has offered me an enormous satisfaction and opportunities for working in a relationship that focuses on research, training and other programs aimed at decreasing workplace violence, human right violations and the stabilization of civility within a hostile environment.

My compensation and blessings are achieved by listening and watching inspired individuals who want to excel in their career and leadership character.

From this view, I can speak with all individuals about the academics and benefits of the job – I often think to myself, coming up through the ranks as a rookie prison guard evolving in a professional correctional officer.

No longer a prison guard, and climbing the ladder as designed by opportunities and chances that gave me the vision to make something good happen in the lives of others and my own.

The essence of Religion, Faith and Conflict

The Power of Inspiration and the

Creation of Doctrines & Conflict

 

In order to acquire knowledge, one must possess inspiration for in a very poetic manner, inspiration bring us character – an individual trait exclusive to person, place or thing, and is figurative, vague and indefinite. Therefore, when men are inspired they rise about the philosophy of life and focus on the advanced forms of thinking.

Thus we create a religion or a way of life that rises above dreaming and verses. Inspiration shapes character, attitudes and works steadily towards the desire to find the ultimate realities of life. In many ways, the ultimate reality of life exceeds the limitations of man. It moves entire religions or societies to enlarge personal or philosophical claims and bring prosperity and satisfaction. Yet, in its simplistic terms, it is all relative to the time and space we occupy.

Secondly, the application of philosophy creates a logical method to create a religion. Since there are no laws applied to the spirit of philosophy, it becomes a free inquiry and open to many assumptions and ideas. Eventually, these ideas can be converted to deeds or actions that create the staple of the religion as it eliminates the critical assumptions from the uncritical ones, cleansing the process to develop the path to faith.

After all, the essence of any religion is the foundation of faith; and faith, like anything living, sees its presence in a trackless wandering manner that is unattended by intellect which in time and practice, develop a spirit or heart of a man and creates an invisible wealth inside him.

Although facing the ultimate reality, faith is nothing more than a feeling. It has cognitive content and may exist in opposing men or parties. Such division of faith creates different religions. Apart from the idea of this religion, there becomes a need to establish a doctrine for such ideas to guide behaviors and rituals connected to the links of the tracks of the invisible faith. Such doctrines become truths and vowed upon by those believing, to be the ultimate reality of life.

Eventually men establish a system of general truths which have the effect of transforming the desired character when they are sincerely held and vividly apprehended by those ideals now turned into deeds.

This cycle of inspiration has created process of transformation and guides man’s inner and outer souls.  That is the primary aim of religion; that is the obvious desire of establishing general truths and embody it into the designed doctrines. Ultimately, it is settled on to be the truth.

This is where there is conflict with truth and science. No one doubts faith and the resulting doctrines based on philosophical principles. In the process, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science sometimes creating conflicts.

One cannot rationalize faith – for to rationalize faith would be contradictory to the philosophy imposed or implied. Doubt would cast an individual’s faith in the religion and be judged either unfit or misaligned with such doctrines. If one was to not submit to their own free thinking, they would have to blindly follow a religion they do not agree with except in philosophical terms and not as a law.

Man has found the jurisdiction of philosophy except on its own terms. While sitting in judgement on religion, philosophy cannot give religion an inferior place among its data. Hence the conflict is everlasting unless one submits to the religious beliefs so mandated.

Religion is not an arbitrary position in the universe, either you believe in what you live or reject it. more seriously, it is neither departmental or proportional or a mere thought – it is based on character, attitude and deeds or actions. It is an expression of a whole man – not divided, however, based on different principles, mankind could find themselves at odds over the ideologies or doctrines involved.

This brings us to the modern times religion and faith. Once grasped as a custom, tradition or practice, it takes entire new doctrines to change the direction. Religion, although piecemealed through time, is progressively a works towards wholeness – a process that make take eternity. Man can only enjoy the faith and pleasures they have embraced to seek the inner peace of their own soul. These thoughts and intuitions drive their behaviors. Faith cannot stand still – it needs constant rejuvenation and seeks visions of the same reality that reveals itself in time and space as well as how they live in accordance with their function in life.

Nor is there any reason to suppose that thought and intuition are essentially opposed to each other. They spring up from the same root and complement each other. The one grasps religious piecemeal, the other grasps it in its wholeness. The one fixes its gaze on the eternal, the other on the temporal aspect of the reality that surrounds them.

This is the process when man searches for a rational foundation in their religion. Best described as the constant works of later formed mystics, visions and successive chapters in the history of their culture, customs and practices with a desired spirit to establish a coherent system of doctrines based on those ideas and spirits devoted to seek the truth gathered from various theological movements around them.