Strengthening Your Conscious Self

Can you relate?

Name this character for me.

Here is a picture of the part of me who protects my money, keeps me in check, helps me budget, helps me when I need to do claims and billing at work, and reminds me of my financial goals. Yes, there is a reason he is a bear.

I have been Internal Family Systems Level 1 Trained by the Cambridge Health Alliance. I work with parts of my client's and work with parts of myself with a therapist and business coach. I have been using the following visual imagery in my mind whenever I conduct an IFS parts meditation involving the Self and self energy. Please feel free to borrow this image for your own practice.

When he was in the third grade, he lived in a low income housing development. He didn't have many friends, save the occasional outcast, freak, or geek. One day he was playing a game of "kickball" with some neighborhood children around his age. When a few older kids arrived to play, and the numbers required teams, people were chosen by the team leaders. He was not chosen. He grabbed his ball and went home. He would later share a memory of the paved playground being flooded and the children from the neighborhood swimming in the dirty water. He also remembers the name of the housing project "Forest Park."

I'm speaking for a young vulnerable exiled part of my subconscious. I found him while working with a part of me that protects me from the emotional energy of my bullying trauma. IFS Therapy really is amazing.

An ethical question for reflection:

When we benefit from social, economic, political, or technological systems that cause preventable suffering, what responsibility do we have to help change those systems—even when change requires us to surrender some comfort, convenience, wealth, power, or privilege?

Individual responsibility matters, but individuals do not live outside systems. Our health, opportunities, choices, and behavior are shaped by families, communities, institutions, economic conditions, technology, culture, and public policy. Compassion cannot mean merely feeling concerned about suffering while continuing to protect the conditions that produce it.

From a psychological and Buddhist perspective, awareness creates responsibility. Once we recognize suffering and understand some of its causes, deliberate inaction becomes a choice rather than a neutral position.

Where should we draw the ethical boundary between individual liberty and collective responsibility? What do we truly owe one another?

These are my opinions only, there are no facts to back up my claim, only what I know.

I see, feel, hear, and sense patterns, cycles, and rhythms. I can do this pattern recognition thing with people, plants, animals, music, art, movies, television, society, culture, religion, politics, markets, etc. I am somewhat of an enigma. It has taken me decades to finally realize this about myself and now I have a name for it. So do you understand? Yes? Patterns? Right? Okay. Here is my warning to the world. I don't know how the collapse of Western Civilization will happen, but we are on that very fast moving train folks.

- Will it be a revolution?
- Will it be a civil war?
- Will it be total collapse?

There are thousands of variables, factors, and chess pieces moving around the board, and it is hard to see where it ends, but it is coming to an end very soon.

Game = connect the dots.

Psychohistory.
Harry Seldon.
Encyclopedia Galactica.
Foundation.
Empire.
Asimov.
Gibbon.
Sagan.

Anthropology.
Sociology.
Psychology.
Philosophy.
Game Theory.

Media.
Illiteracy.
Celebrated Ignorance.
Extremism.
Nationalism.
Individualism.
Capitalism.
Politics.
Religion.

Pride.
Anger.
Greed.
Gluttony.
Lust.
Envy.
Sloth.

Apathy.
Complacency.
Entitlement.
Narcissism.

If you're still reading this, allow me to leave you with this final thought:

The planet will recover and survive long after humans are gone.
(If there are no extraterrestrial catastrophes)

Society has a habit of blaming plants for failing to grow while ignoring the toxic soil they were planted in.

We tell people to be more resilient, more disciplined, more grateful, more productive, and more positive—without asking whether the systems around them are poisoning their health, safety, dignity, and hope.

Sometimes the problem is not the plant.

Sometimes the soil needs to change.

Why a community-centered learning space?

Because learning is not only about receiving information — it is also about being understood, reflected, and supported in context.

A community-centered format helps create deeper trust, shared understanding, and more meaningful dialogue. It allows participants to bring lived experience into the learning space, connect through common context, and engage in conversations that feel relevant, grounded, and supportive.

When people learn alongside others who understand aspects of their experience, education can become a space for reflection, connection, and growth — which is the intention behind CAP’s community-centered approach.

Learn more about CAP: https://hubs.ly/Q04gHKzV0