Afasufupa Unscripted Episode 1

Paul Hanley and Susana Verduzco, aka "Mexican Donald Trump," are now producing a weekly podcast, Afasufupa Unscripted.

In Episode 1, Paul and Susy discuss their shared spiritual mission.

It's not covfefe.

It's Afasufupa.

Unscripted.

Listen here:

https://soundcloud.com/paul-hanley-237215425/afasufupa-unscripted-episode-1

Reality and Opinion

"There are two answers to every question - God's answer and everybody else's - and everybody else is wrong when they disagree with him." -
Tony Evans

Or we might say there is reality and there are our perspectives.

Either way, our opinions aren't the yardstick of truth - they are the yardstick of the limits on our experiences and the limits on our willingness to open ourselves to new experiences.

I would say everyone's honest perspective is correct in the sense that reality genuinely is manifesting itself to us as we perceive it.

The E-F Zone

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." - David Hume

If I told you that the reason the US is involved in dozens of military conflicts around the world is that we are in a trade war with the Martians, who have been hoarding the good Coca Cola on their planet, a reasonable response would be asking to see my evidence.

You might even quote astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, who said,

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it is my job, my responsibility, as an astronomer to remind people that alien hypotheses should always be a last resort."

And yet, and yet, and yet ....

Mothra, still feeling the pain of defeat at the hands of Godzilla, can accuse presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian asset without the tiniest drop of evidence - in fact, with oceans of evidence to the contrary - and people take her seriously...?

If only my pronouncements had that kind of sway ... we could get back the real cola that has cocaine in it ...

But that's just what President Trump wants me to believe ... or is it?

See what I mean? There's no end to complete gibberish, once you start stepping into the evidence-free zone.

Payment

"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing." - Albert Einstein.

And sometimes one pays nothing for the most valuable things one gets.

A Taste for the Special

     My red upper lip stands me apart. We are all rooted in the same soil but they push me away in the wind.

     My mate once brushed up against me. ‘Twas the lower lip red on that one. The One who completed me cut away for a girl’s pleasure.

     Side by side we stood, flexing but not falling. Now One is in front of her. No, by now the irreplaceable has been thrown into the dirt to rot into a meal for those of one color. Or does the grave lie apart?

     Yes, it must lie apart like two red lips smiling.

     Flowers are not human. But I sense the tup-tup-tup of her gleeful approach. Back to cut me away and watch me wither.

     To be discarded with my beloved Other? Our together graves apart from the one-colors?

     The girl recognizes our specialness. She has taste.

     Is that boiling water I sense?

     Yes. The girl has taste.

Making Choices

The toughest and most important thing we can do is make choices. So people convince themselves they don't have a choice. Genes, environment, and most of the rest of psychology can easily degenerate into one big excuse.

Success

"To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - that is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Crime “Prevention”

Existing crime "prevention" policies, whatever their "good intentions," are spreading crime; it's no secret that giving "offenders" - what a dehumanizing term - criminal records often makes people homeless, jobless, resentful, unstable, and lacking in social support - all factors pushing them back toward lives of crime. Placement on one of the multiplying array of registries, (not just for "sex offenders" any longer) aggravates the problems while simultaneously chewing up and spitting out law enforcement resources that could have been used on prevention that - perish the thought - actually works, like education.

What's so appealing to me about fighting for the rights of the "worst of the worst" from a practical perspective is that any positive changes for "them" which bring our laws more in line with the Constitution while reducing crime have a trickle-down effect on "lesser" crimes and "offenders."

For example, counterproductive "sex offender" registries have been declared perfectly constitutional on the basis of what Supreme Court Justice Kennedy called our "frightening and high" probability of committing new crimes. This was based solely on a long-since discredited re-offense rate from an "expert" author of a Psychology Today article. Re-offense rates for all crimes are controversial, and sex crimes especially so, but whatever the real numbers, research consistently shows lower observed re-offense rates for "sex offenders" than for "non sex offenders." This means that by the Supreme Court's reasoning, "non sex offenders" belong on registries even more than I do.

You might take a moment to mentally contrast my desire to protect everyone, from innocent victims to repeat "offenders," with the conventional approach of singling me out for cruel and unusual punishments, - which the Supreme Court has erroneously ruled aren't actually punishments, so new ones can be added after I've served my time. Did you catch that last part, those of you who have ever rolled through a stop sign? The day may come when your punishment never ends too.

Moving Forward

"I'm not so much about the why. I'm more about What can you do differently moving forward?" - Patty Sneed, the best counselor I've ever had.

If I had a nickel for every mental health professional I've told my story to, I could pay off Donald Trump's billions in debt and then maybe he wouldn't feel such pressure to pay his undocumented workers bare subsistence wages - a win for everyone. And I'm not the only one who went to therapy under the impression that all you have to do is dig through your painful past until you understand yourself and then you'll be cured. Twenty-five years after my first therapy session, however, I'm still telling my story and I can still know exactly why I shouldn't smoke and do it anyway.

When I told a friend I start the first class in a psychology PhD Monday, she said, "Good, then when you're Doctor Hanley maybe you can refer me to someone who can fix me."

After explaining that I won't be that kind of doctor, I said, "Anyway, I can fix you now with three simple words: 'Make healthy choices.'"

She protested, "I'm trying to do that!"

I said, "I know. But you'll notice none of the three words were 'pain-free.' or 'easy.'"

A Lot of Knowledge

In my life, when the stakes have been high it has taken more courage to take on minor uncertainties than it has to take on major known dangers. A man with a gun out in the open would probably scare me less than entering a strange house where there might be someone dangerous.

Yet my knowledge has been an even greater enemy than my uncertainty when, instead of staying in the day, I've let my fear hold me back because I "knew" what was coming.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. (Call 1-(800)-THEY-SAY if you don't believe me.) But a lot of knowledge can be even more dangerous if it controls us.

Good Days

There's a bumper sticker saying something like, "A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work." What convinced me I should go back to writing these posts regularly is my version of that bumper sticker: "Any day I write creatively is a good day." By composing something every morning, I guarantee my day has been a fulfilling success almost before it's started.

I submit that you can ensure you have no truly throwaway days if you figure out how to complete the sentence, "Any day I (fill in the blank) is a good day." I'm convinced there's some activity or accomplishment that perfectly suits each of us and tells us we're living a meaningful life every time we do it.

Reactors

Family and other loved ones can be like the fuel in our gas tanks, or they can act like a stuck emergency brake we have to release to move forward.

I've been blessed with supportive loved ones, but even they wouldn't have been enough to keep me going if I hadn't detached with love from several people who "brought out the worst in me." That's a rather irresponsible way of saying it, though; the truth is they were just living their life by their rules and I became my worst self in response to those rules.

My biggest mistake was thinking my stagnation or outright regression around certain people meant I needed to work something out with them; really it was a sign I wasn't being true to my own values (or just as often, hadn't fully worked out what my code was).

Much as I wanted to be independent, I was a follower (a reactor).

It's easy to rebel; any fool can charge a machine gun nest. Truly "leading" our own life in a way we can "live with" is our greatest challenge.

Flavor

Here's the kind of word play insight that tastes as good as homemade ice cream to me when I arrive at it: Over editing of flavor, when performed on a truly meaningful thought, can produce something quasi-independently important in itself, like: "Waste, want."

Context Dropping

The reason the modern world of thinking has been perverted by context dropping, or as logicians call it, the "fallacy of suppressed evidence," is that few people realize that all phenomena everywhere are interconnected. For example, if you search enough, you can discover meaningful relationships between, say, the color of a particular lipstick and the price of tamales in Tijuana.

Although connections between given phenomena may not be relevant to a particular issue, surprisingly often they are - we just won't allow ourselves to see ALL the influences at play in most cases. Thus context dropping is really a symptom of closed mindedness.

Fear

Fear.

What comes to mind when you read that word? Like love, the place of fear in our lives speaks Gettysburg Addresses - what fear means to us in this moment can reveal the roots of our values, needs, and more.

And somehow integrating what we fear with what we love can win inner civil wars.

Love

Love.

When you read that word, what comes to mind? A romantic relationship? A general attitude toward humanity? God? Family love? Friendship? Your feelings about yourself? Something else?

What "Love" means to us at a particular moment says a lot about us: our values and priorities at that moment; our lacks, fulfillments, desires & goals; our attitude(s) in general.

What better yardstick of our lives and our success than the place of Love in the picture?

(You might be able to measure many of the same things with hate, but why go destructive when it's so much more fun to create?)

On Becoming Who We Are

If what you see were always what you get, being a human being would be enough. There would be no need for self-improvements or adjustments of goals, because we "beings" would be rigidly related to existence. But to deal with life as it is, and not just as it appears to a limited "being," we need to grow and adapt, we need to become human becomings. Rigid beings don't fare well in a changing world, as rust, the biological cycle of life, and the evolution of cultural practices demonstrate.

Aside from physical changes beyond our control, our choices and fluid awareness seem to be the characteristics most distinguishing our becoming from our being - and the characteristics that take on the most human of flavors.

Like “Deviant Urges,” Stereotyping Is Part Of Being Human

How tempting it is to speak or write to people's worst self - to "talk down" to people. For one thing, that worst self is often what they are showing us.

I think the real obstacle to addressing the best self of other people is our inability or unwillingness to identify things we have in common with them. Or we fail to identify things our agendas have in common.

For example, I will probably always face unwillingness to hear about the many times I've sensed a fiery spark of gorgeous Divine humanity in people who have committed sexual atrocities against children because so many people refuse to fully accept that child abusers have the same human ability to choose we all do. It's much easier to categorize some people as incurable "them"s than to squarely face the many times we ourselves were tempted by and even gave into unhealthy urges.

So it's very easy for me to dismiss good-hearted people as ignorant, stupid, or even evil just because they have so far remained closed to the humanity of people they only know third-hand. It's especially easy because I've been called everything in the book myself by such people.

But more stereotyping of them by me won't help my messages get through; only connecting on a human level can ever do that. Same thing goes for reforming the "bad guys," in my opinion.

Let's Help Sex Offenders

     Does sexual abuse create sexual abuse? The nation’s, perhaps the world’s, leading epidemiology researchers, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has some things to say about this. In 2014, the CDC published a document called, “Connecting The Dots: An Overview Of The Links Among Multiple Forms Of Violence.” The document’s section on sexual violence refers the reader to “Rape Perpetration: A review” by R. Jewkes of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative. Jewkes says, in part:

The evidence of childhood sexual abuse as a risk factor for subsequent perpetration is very extensive and probably has been the most comprehensively investigated of all risk factors for perpetration. In a meta-analysis, a history of child sexual abuse was five times more common among adolescent sexual offenders than among adolescent non-sexual offenders (Seto and Lalumiere 2010). Further, sexual offenders against children are much more likely to have sexual abuse victimisation histories than non-offenders or non-sexual offenders (Whitaker DJ, Le B et al. 2008). Several large national studies of US adolescents and men in college have found that those who had sexually assaulted a partner were significantly more likely to have experienced sexual abuse themselves (Malamuth, Sockloskie et al. 1991; Malamuth, Linz et al. 1995; Borowsky IW, Hogan M et al. 1997; Casey, Beadnell et al. 2009). A meta-analysis shows all types of sex offenders have an elevated risk of exposure to sexual victimisation in childhood (Whitaker DJ, Le B et al. 2008), with some authors having found higher rates of child sexual abuse among sexual offenders against children than those among sexual offenders against adults (Seghorn TK, Prentky RA et al. 1987; Overholser JC and Beck 1989).

     

     (Note: The studies I’ve seen generally distinguish between men, whose childhood sexual abuse increases the risk that they will abuse others, and women, whose childhood sexual abuse usually increases the risk they will get abused again. Women who get sexually abused as children are much less likely than men to commit sex offenses of their own).

    So yes, sexual abuse creates sexual abuse. It should be obvious that we need to help survivors of sexual abuse get past their pain. Sex offender therapists, however, are notoriously resistant to the idea of treating the victim issues of people who commit sex crimes. How about we go beyond treating survivors of sexual abuse to preventing abuse in the first place, by treating the people I call “Invisible Survivors.”

     Or is it just too hard for you to hold the two images of perpetrator and victim in your mind as the same person? Do you think perps don’t deserve help? Then not only are you denying them help, you are setting them up to create even more victims. Now who’s the bad guy?

What's Wrong With The Sex Offense Laws?

     Calling people who commit sex crimes “incurable” gives us no reason to change. It gives us no hope.

     Good luck reducing sexual abuse with that one.

     Good luck with the prison, probation, parole, police, and survivor-help budgets too.

     The Incurable Dogma is responsible for the laws keeping many of those convicted of sex crimes on probation, the sex offender registry, or both, for life. After all, if you cannot be cured, the government is going to have to keep an eye on you forever, and prohibit you from certain housing, jobs, and movement. And once convicted, politicians are free to violate your civil rights, because most voters agree you cannot be cured.

     Good luck keeping law-enforcement and probation and parole budgets down with that one. Just please don’t complain about the money spent to keep down vigilante attacks against us. You might consider, though, that researchers agree that no reliable studies show any reduction in crime from these laws.

     Good luck with welfare budgets too, since the laws, predictably, create homeless, jobless people who lack social support and resent being singled out for cruel and unusual punishments, all of those people in need of help. Could joblessness, homelessness, resentment, and lack of support make former sex offenders more likely to commit new crimes too?

     Since most of the re-arrests of former sex offenders are for probation/parole and registry violations, not sex crimes, you’re really going to have to work to keep those prison budgets down. Not to mention county jails, state hospitals, and probation and parole departments.

     We’ll “always be a risk,” is what the “experts” say. They don’t like to explain why. The why is that we have choices, making us unpredictable—but we can also choose to stop committing sex crimes, and that choice is as good as a cure.

     Still, some people do benefit from the Incurable Dogma. For example, “expert” therapists who get lucrative government contracts are justified by the Incurable Dogma in making money off people in therapy forever.

     Big surprise that the psychological “experts” are the ones most responsible for spreading the Incurable Dogma. And big surprise that most of these “experts” aren’t stopped by the fact that people who commit sex crimes have the second lowest rate of re-offense out of the eight major categories of offenders, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

     Yeah, big surprise so many people like me got sexually abused when we were children.

I'm Perfect

     When I search for God, I am seeking something I know I cannot ever fully grasp. At best, when I feel One with God, my limited being is left knowing I only touched one out of an infinity of aspects of God.

     So the search will never end. I can look forever. And it is quests that most suit me and give my life meaning. I feel drawn to search for God more than to anything else.

     So, I’m perfectly designed to seek God.

     When I got this, I slapped my forehead and said to the greatest woman on earth:

     "I never needed a V-8.”