Friday, January 9, 2026

Living with Open Hands 2.0 (Table of Contents)

 Living with Open Hands 2.0

Preface: Preparation for Going Beyond the Pale

(A Framework for Inquiry and Reflection)


Living with Open Hands 1.0 

Living with Open Hands is an outward expression of the inner work of opening the Mind, Heart, and Will. This opening up requires open eyes and open ears that see and hear with the heart . . . a "Seeing" that goes beneath the surface . . . to the heart, the center, the silence. 


Living with Open Hands 1.0 was the beginning of 18 years of blogging. I had so many questions and so much dissonance that I had to write in order to better formulate all of my questions. I also found a way or a framework emerging for me to use alongside my religious / spiritual journey to make sure that I was maintaining my humanity along with my spiritual practice. But as I continued, the story began to change significantly. I realized that the more human I became, the less religious I could be in good conscience. And then I found the dissonance getting even greater, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. It wasn't until I let go of all dogma and doctrine that I could sense some resonance and harmony.


Nothing is "fixed" or absolute. There is no certainty. There is no solid ground. Why??? Because everything is changing constantly. This is not what I was taught all my life, for 50 years. I didn't like it. But I finally was able to accept this truth. So 5 years ago, I started to write Living with Open Hands 2.0. I had stopped writing because I was so astounded at what I was discovering. I had to decide whether to be fully human, authentic and honest, or be labeled, categorized, and boxed by some high- minded people stuffed up with dogma. The decision presented itself plainly. I no longer wanted to be a second hand person. So then, I knew I needed to begin to write again, if I were to maintain my own sanity and keep seeking to understand; following the truth wherever it may lead.

Living with Open Hands 1.0 -- https://livingwithopenhands1.blogspot.com/ led to 

Living with Open Hands 2.0 --  https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/ 


I Don’t Write because I Know.

I Write because I Don’t Know.

I Don’t Write because I Understand.

I Write as a Way of Seeking Understanding.

For me, Writing Has Become a Disruptive,

Transformational Process of Inquiry.


The reality of being human
“If you wish to become a philosopher, the first thing to realise is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man’s world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man’s, so that they cannot both be right. People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Art of Philosophizing and other Essays (1942)

"We become especially hostile when trying to defend opinions we know, deep down, are false. Rather than trying on a different pair of goggles, we become mental contortionists, twisting and turning until we find an angle of vision that keeps our current views intact." [Adam Grant]



Living with Open Hands 2.0 

Table of Contents

 

Why I Write (2.0)

Why I Post 

The Dissonance of Structural Incoherence

Too Big To Fail

Introduction

My Philosophical Evolution

Living with Open Hands 2.0      

          -- a continuing evolvement 

Seeing the World through the Eyes of the Brokenhearted and 

       Seeing the World through our own Eyes of Brokenheartedness

Learning to See


Part 1: The House Built on Sand Will Not Withstand the Storms of Life

Chapter 1: My Demise

My Foundations Began to Crumble

Disruption of Destructive Strongholds


“The blizzard, the blizzard of the world

Has crossed the threshold

And it's overturned

The order of the soul.” 

(Leonard Cohen)


The Power of Stories

The Macro-Narratives and the Micro-Narratives that Shape Our World

The Fictions that Thought Creates

A Downward Journey

Die Before You Die

Downloaded Thinking / Cultural Conditioning

The Violence of the Machine

The Virus of the Mind; a mental health pandemic

Labeling, Categorizing, Dehumanizing ,and Eliminating

The Trouble with Normal

Silence at the Center

WOKE!

Into the Abyss

Fragmentation or Wholeness

Chapter 2: My Deconstruction

Breaking It Wide Open -- Seeing the Total Incoherence

Demolition of Underlying Strongholds and Constructs

13 Reasons Why - The Deconstruction of my Deconversion

Second Hand Person

A Circular Paradox?

How Do We Know That We Know What We Know???

Did you know? WE ARE ALL WRONG...

Knowing and Unknowing, Truth and Untruth

Permanency

Making the Unconscious Conscious

A Shift of Authority

What is This Drive to Convince? … to Be Right???

Opinionation

Comfort, Security, Certainty

Grasping, Gripping, Groping, Griping

This Unknowing

Perspectives on Seeing

Through Alien Eyes

Contentment or Satisfaction

The Tyranny of Thought

Politics of Violence

Mediated versus Unmediated Living

Chapter 3: My Deconversion

The Absolute Necessity of the Demolition of All Human Constructs

Dogma, Creeds, Doctrine, Theologies, Underlying Assumptions

> Doctrinal Dissonance and Biblical Contradictions

The Image of God

That Which is Greater Than Me

Behold Thy God

Righteous Savior Syndrome

The Underpinnings of Faith

An Old, Old Story

          based on crumbling foundations

Heaven and Hell

          and other such stories

How Holy is the Holy Book?

10 Commandments -- the best morality of all time?

Hoodwinked & Hijacked

Immigration, Homosexuality, and Abortion -- a biblical and historical perspective

Bedrock of Being

Philosophical Suicide

Dogma

> Christians Bearing False Witness Against Christianity

Caring Too Much

All Lives Matter?

Understanding

Compassion First

Violence at the Core

Words Matter

The Trauma of Toxicity

Democracy or Hypocrisy

Informed Choice: the missing link

If Only . . .

Being a Victim of Change

Triggering Fear

Voices of the People

What Works?

These Stories

WWJD

Cairn of Remembrance

On Prayer

Magical Thinking

Truth or Lies ... YOU choose

Part 2: The House Built on a Solid Foundation Will Withstand the Storms of Life

Chapter 4: My Reconstruction

Rebuilding a Solid Foundation -- From Incoherence to Wholeness

> Internal Reconstruction (perspective, attitude, values, understanding)

How We Think and See…

with an open mind, open heart, and open will.

The Inward Journey

Static or Dynamic; Stuck or Unfolding?

Being Open to Me

Unclenching the Fists

The Cocoon

Hope and Freedom

Blind Spot

Truth, Wisdom, Meaning

My Sacred Path of the Amoeba

Significance and Relevance

Thoughts on Thought

The Sacred and the Profane

I - Thou (versus) I - It


> External Reconstruction (words, relationships, community, politics)
How We Act, React, and Interact...

with an open mind, open heart, and open will

Being Political

Democracy or Hypocrisy?

Politics of Violence

Truth or Lies - You choose

Voices of the People

Virus of the Mind; a mental health pandemic

Labeling, Categorizing, Dehumanizing ,and Eliminating

Feed the Hungry? Really???

Socialism -- Evil and Godless?

Liberal??? What does that even mean???

Progressive & Open versus Regressive & Closed

Mad World - Are We Listening?

Alternative Reality

A Christian Nation???

The Essence of Democracy... The Essence of Reality

Chapter 5: My Worldview -- a new story emerging

How Then Shall I Live?

The Strength of Vulnerability; The Power of Gentleness

Being Human Together

The Necessity of Diversity

Ubuntu

Great Conversation

A Page of Lost Questions

Incidental Graces

The Great Circle of Life and Death


A Tentative Conclusion


Even though this blog reflects a total deconstruction and deconversion, an uprooting and destruction of my beliefs and dogma that I followed all my life, I realized that my very basic guidelines for living, individually and collectively, have not changed at all. There are still the same. And I am still me. See:


Bibliography



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Addicted!!!

 

Addicted to Being Right

Addicted to Dogma

Addicted to Violence


I began questioning everything I was told to think about 20 years ago. It was part of a blogging process that was unsuspectedly transformational. Or maybe more accurately I should say blogging became part of my inner transformation process that had begun it's work several years prior, unbeknownst to me. My blog is named Living with Open Hands, as an expression of an open mind, an open  heart, and an open will. 


Actually I did not ask for this change (this transformational crap) but it came over me as a surprising mystery, as a thief in the night, in undeniable beauty, a clarity that I could not ignore. 


I realized this hurricane overturned everything within and without. I had nothing left that was not destroyed. I was left with this: I had to follow the truth wherever it led  me. I didn’t want to know anything beyond that which I already knew but then I was overcome with this mantra: 


If I already know, I can no longer learn.


This knowing is something that cannot be told to me.

This knowing was anchored in my bones. 

This knowing I had to remember because it is something I already knew

… but had forgotten.


As I’ve grown older, I realize that I know nothing. “He that speaks, doesn’t know. He that does not speak knows.” (Laotzu) Not only this but I began to see that the more I think I know, the more defendedness. The more I was trying to argue what I think I know, the more I can be confident that I have no clue.


This confidence that I know things, the more vehemently that I defended what I thought I knew, the more I could see that I did not know.


What I think I know is what I’ve been told to think.

By outside forces

By powers and principalities I could not see or hear. 

Conditioning had been drumming these ideas, these assumptions, into me, embedding them in my soul through cultural institutions, not inner knowing. External authority is nothing more than stories in our minds. Inner authority, inner knowing comes from deep within and is passed on through the generations. 


It is like intuition and instinct in animals. 

How do they know where to fly for winter? 

How do they know how to find food and feed their offspring?


And yet, even though we have an inner teacher, an inner light, a still small voice of truth; we sit and wait for someone out there to tell us who we are, what to do, and what to think. Someone to save us. We no longer bother to discern the truth from within.


It startled me as I realized that I was a second hand person. 

Please see post here: https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2019/04/second-hand-person.html 


When Things Fall Apart

(Another way of seeing)


Bad or Evil or Wrong are labels for interpretations by self. So that in and of itself makes those interpretations suspect. Maybe the discomfort we feel are versions of our own constructs of control and certitude. Maybe they are simply part of the process of change.


"The word change normally refers to new beginnings. But transformation more often happens not when something new begins but when something old falls apart. The pain of something old falling apart—disruption and chaos—invites the soul to listen at a deeper level. It invites and sometimes forces the soul to go to a new place because the old place is not working anymore. The mystics use many words to describe this chaos: fire, darkness, death, emptiness, abandonment, trial, the Evil One, the dark night of the soul. Whatever it is, it does not feel good and it does not feel like God. We will do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart. This is when we need patience, guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening our controls and certitudes."

~ Richard Rohr


For the past 10 years or so, I’ve been wondering what it is that drives the “true believers”. It no longer made sense to me, especially since I knew that I was for 40 years that “true believer”. 


What is this convincement that I sense in myself and others?

What is this defendedness and aggression that is displayed out of context?

Why do we need to know, need to be right, and hence make others wrong?

This was making sense less and less, especially when I’d look within and could see that same ugliness. None of us want to admit this ugliness within.


“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956


Recently it struck me that when I go deepest, to the rock bottom in my soul, the part that I could not decipher is the invisible (to me) core of addiction. 


This was so shocking I could not believe it or face that ugliness within. 

I’m not an addict… am I? 

And if so, what am I addicted to???


As a proud American, I was pierced through and through by this: America is addicted to violence: https://youtu.be/DoBMdTsula8 


“And like the addict, we don’t care that violence doesn’t work. Like the addict we need the fix.”


Addiction to violence. My addiction to being right and hence making others wrong, drove me blindly for so long. I can’t even contain the amount of hurt my fundamentalist thinking caused so many people I care about.


Addiction seemed to be eating at my heart and soul. Then realized it was an addiction to dogma. I couldn’t let go of that comfort, security, and certainty that it falsely provided.


I didn’t become spiritual through books or teachers, but my spirituality was born from chaos, mistakes, and breaking apart more times than I can count. Every time I broke apart I had to rebuild. Every time I put myself back together, I came back different. My darkest nights taught me more about spirituality than light ever could. My spirit wasn’t taught. It was shaped by fire.



Now that I’ve been living in this new paradigm, I keep wondering and asking myself, 

what is it that kept me stuck.

How is it that I could continue to argue in the same vein.


The last few weeks, I’ve been gradually realizing that my stuckness was due to an addiction so subtle, so familiar, and so embedded that I could not see it.


Like most addictions, they begin with those things that are most obvious and most familiar so that they can remain undetected and normal.


If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

Peace on earth, goodwill to all.

Peace is foundational to any goodwill.

Just as light obliterates all darkness, so peace precludes and suffocates the growth of seeds of violence, oppression, domination, being right, (hence making others wrong), or violating the identity, integrity, or humanity of others.

Often we miss the fact that our addiction to violence nurtures our addiction to fundamentalism, evangelicalism, nationalism, subjugation, and righteousness (lording it over) before others.

I am only beginning to break free of this addiction after a 20 year struggle.

What I couldn’t see for so many years is my addiction to dogma that didn't allow me to think for myself, that left me stuck as a second hand person, that didn't allow me to finally stop trying to be right and make others wrong. After all, we are all wrong. And this is a sort of domination that is a form of violence. I'm not sure how to forgive myself...


Did You Know? WE ARE ALL WRONG

Remember this.


We must first see

to break free...


Gone from mystery into mystery

Gone from daylight into night

Another step deeper into darkness

Closer to the light (Bruce Cockburn)
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