Henry Giroux: The Dismantling of Democracy: A Grim Projection of American Fascism Under Trump

This is an excellent piece by Henry Giroux, who I've long held with the deepest respect and gratitude for his courage and relentless quest to bring us the truth. Here he writes about Trump and the dismantling of democracy. Henry also illuminates how Project 2025 is the "American Version of Mein Kampf."

We must do everything possible to (1) stop a second Trump presidency, and (2) address, heal, and transform the conditions which have long given rise to so much suffering and despair, dehumanization and violence, and ignorance and vulnerability to cults and disinformation. There is an imperative that we reclaim our essential sacred connections within ourselves, with each other, and within all of life on Earth. — Molly

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

By HENRY GIROUX

The guardrails of democracy have been blasted into dust. The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity grants presidents carte blanche to commit crimes as long as they act within their “constitutional authority.” Welcome to gangster capitalism. Trump, the convicted felon, white nationalist, white supremacist, and aspiring dictator, can rest assured that his dream of unaccountable power will be realized if he is elected in November. With the legal cover to use his “official” power to commit endless crimes, the Supreme Court ruling effectively grants Trump the right, if elected, to become a domestic terrorist. Writing a dissent to the ruling, Justice Sotomayor rightly comments on its terrifying implications, calling it an extraordinary power grab and a glaring instance of maligned legality. She writes:

When [the President of the United States] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power?  Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

If and when he takes office, public services that operate, or are supposed to operate, in the name of truth, justice, and freedom will be largely disabled, just as the most crucial democratic rights will continue to be undermined. Young people will be written out of the script of democracy, staggering levels of inequality will increase mass immiseration, the economy will tumble into a massive recession, and blood will flow in the streets and abroad.

Critical ideas and thinking itself will be under siege, as well as any institution capable of producing them. Under Trump and his fascist sycophants, critical thought will disappear from public and higher education, social problems will be criminalized, the oppositional press will be shut down, women will lose control over their reproductive rights, the social state will morph into the punishing state, and the dark cloud of fascism will extinguish the dimming lights of democracy.

Even more tragically for democracy, Trump, if elected, will be able to institute a criminogenic system of law that can be used to assassinate his opponents, kill immigrants, imprison critics, and enact an American version of the Nazi Enabling Act, which allowed Hitler “to issue laws that laid the foundation for the complete Nazification of German society.” This corrupt Supreme Court, filled with bribe-takers, misogynists, and white supremacists, has just put democracy in a coffin. With the collapse of checks and balances that should provide a balance of power in the U.S., we will see a tsunami of barbarism and state violence in America, reminiscent of Fascist Italy, Chile under the ruthless Pinochet, and Nazi Germany. None of these predictions, given the rhetoric of revenge and violence Trump promises to enforce, should appear hypothetical.

Fascist politics, which is the endpoint of capitalism and a failed democracy, will no longer be a matter of historical analysis. First, it will emerge through a series of statutes outlined in Project 2025. As this project takes place, thousands of immigrants will be detained and put in prisons, dissidents will be rounded up and thrown in jail, and show trials will begin for Trump’s most hated enemies, including a range of judges, politicians, and outspoken critics.

Second, every aspect of social life will be militarized, leading to a culture of fear and state violence. Behind this will be the legitimizing force of a thoroughly corrupt Supreme Court majority and a repressive state apparatus, including the police and various elements of the armed forces. A hint of what might transpire is evident in Trump’s recent calls to jail “President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer, and former Vice President Mike Pence, among other high-profile politicians.”[1]Trump also called for a televised military tribunal to hold Liz Cheney responsible for treason. It will only be a matter of time before he and his sycophants, such as Stephen Miller, provide a list of alleged enemies to be potentially thrown out of planes, assassinated, or disappeared—tactics used by dictators like Pinochet in Chile. Given the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, Trump’s deranged fantasies and penchant for revenge, violence, and unchecked authoritarianism can now unfold without any constraints, legally or politically. Welcome to a potential era of gulags, internment centers, and reign of state terrorism masquerading as entertainment and reality TV—broadcast daily on X. This fascist vision is clearly outlined in Project 2025, a 900-page American version of Mein Kampf.

How do we address the slow death of justice, the emergence of a culture of cruelty, the contempt for those perceived as different, and the complete erasure of any meaningful remnants of the social and solidarity? It is hard not to feel the weight of profound loneliness in North America today. Shared values have been replaced not only by shared fears, but also by the collapse of civic literacy, and a value system in which intimacy and compassion, once central to public spaces, have mostly vanished. In the era of Trump, people turn into corpses, mere shells, devoted to the worship of money, violence, and greed. Critical thinking has become dangerous, with institutions once dedicated to it now besieged by white Christian nationalists and billionaire champions of ruthless capitalism.

As James Baldwin once noted, “One has to steal moments to think.” People are ensnared in a haze of historical and social amnesia that nurtures ignorance and mutual alienation. Social fragmentation has evolved into a kind of madness, trapping individuals who increasingly fall prey to the false sense of community offered by purveyors of hate and bigotry. The decay at the heart of capitalism reduces people to lifeless commodities who struggle to trust one another, mired in emotional poverty, a fear of solidarity, and a dread of expressing compassion and dignity. Neoliberalism’s corrosion thrives on manufactured enemies offering the disenchanted the illusion of feeling something, anything at all. This is not the country I grew up in because I no longer recognize it. I am not optimistic, but at the same time, while hope is diminished, it is not lost. Hopefully, mass resistance can persist even in the face of unimaginable odds.  I hold onto Baldwin’s claim that “Even the emptiness of America can be overcome.”

Please go here for the original article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/05/the-dismantling-of-democracy-a-grim-projection-of-american-fascism-under-trump/

Mark Nepo: When We Heal Ourselves, We Heal the World

We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.

It’s like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable.

* * * * *

If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective.

We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe.

Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day—the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening?

It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like.

When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first.

In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.

* * * * *

Just as life is made up of day and night, and song is made up of music and silence, friendships, because they are of this world, are also made up of times of being in touch and spaces in-between. Being human, we sometimes fill these spaces with worry, or we imagine the silence is some form of punishment, or we internalize the time we are not in touch with a loved one as some unexpressed change of heart. Our minds work very hard to make something out of nothing. We can perceive silence as rejection in an instant, and then build a cold castle on that tiny imagined brick. 

The only release from the tensions we weave around nothing is to remain a creature of the heart. By giving voice to the river of feelings as they flow through and through, we can stay clear and open. In daily terms, we call this checking in with each other, though most of us reduce this to a grocery list: How are you today? Do you need any milk? Eggs? Juice? Toilet paper? Though we can help each other survive with such outer kindnesses, we help each other thrive when the checking in with each other comes from a list of inner kindnesses: How are you today? Do you need any affirmation? Clarity? Support? Understanding? When we ask these deeper questions directly, we wipe the mind clean of its misperceptions. Just as we must dust our belongings from time to time, we must wipe away what covers us when we are apart.

* * * * *

Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the Center of our Love.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.

When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of Satori as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education.

Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God.

* * * * *

The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.

Whatever truth we feel compelled to withhold, no matter how unthinkable it is to imagine ourselves telling it, not to is a way of spiritually holding our breath. You can only do it for so long.

Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.

If I dare to hear you
I will feel you like the sun
And grow in your direction.

Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are.

But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.

* * * * *

The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.

Whatever opens us is not as important as what it opens.

Whether through the patterns left in snow, or geese honking in the dark, or through the brilliant wet leaf that hits your face the moment you are questioning your worth, the quiet teachers are everywhere, pointing us to the unlived portion of our lives. When we think we are in charge, the lessons dissolve as accidents or coincidence. But when we’re humble enough to welcome the connections, the glass that breaks across the room is offering us direction, giving us a clue to the story we are in.

The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things.... Stop being a glass. Become a lake.

* * * * *

To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.

We think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will.

The only response to adversity or misunderstanding is to be more completely who we are—to share ourselves more.

There is a great choice that awaits us every day: whether we go around carving holes in others because we have been so painfully carved ourselves, or whether we let spirit play its song through our tender experience, enabling us to listen, as well, to the miraculous music coming through others.

My friends are the beings through whom God loves me.

The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.

* * * * *

Every crack is also an opening. When in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. From the view of the chick, it is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. It begins to feel hungry and cramped. Eventually, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever-shrinking space of its world. Finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end. Its sky is falling. As the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its shell. In that moment—growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking—the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn't die, but falls into the world.

* * * * *

Burying and Planting 

The culmination of one love, one dream, one self, is the anonymous seed of the next. There is very little difference between burying and planting. For often, we need to put dead things to rest, so that new life can grow. And further, the thing put to rest—whether it be a loved one, a dream, or a false way of seeing—becomes the fertilizer for the life about to form. 

As the well-used thing joins with the earth, the old love fertilizes the new; the broken dream fertilizes the dream yet conceived; the painful way of being that strapped us to the world fertilizes the freer inner stance about to unfold. This is very helpful when considering the many forms of self we inhabit over a lifetime. One self carries us to the extent of its usefulness and dies. We are then forced to put that once beloved skin to rest, to join it with the ground of spirit from which it came, so it may fertilize the next skin of self that will carry us into tomorrow. 

There is always grief for what is lost and always surprise at what is to be born. But much of our pain in living comes from wearing a dead and useless skin, refusing to put it to rest, or from burying such things with the intent of hiding them rather than relinquishing them. For every new way of being, there is a failed attempt mulching beneath the tongue. For every sprig that breaks surface, there is an old stick stirring underground. For every moment of joy sprouting, there is a new moment of struggle taking root. We live, embrace, and put to rest our dearest things, including how we see ourselves, so we can resurrect our lives anew.

When we heal ourselves, we heal the world. For as the body is only as healthy as its individual cells, the world is only as healthy as its individual souls.

― Mark Nepo 

Quotes from The Book of Awakening: Having the Life 

You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Chris Hedges: My Thoughts On the Attempted Trump Assassination

This is an excellent piece.

I have long held Chris Hedges with the highest respect, appreciation, and gratitude. In posting this essential larger picture that Chris illuminates here, I also again affirm that, for me, I will vote for whoever the democratic candidate is. I recognize the even more dangerous threat to us all that Trump poses — and especially when taking into account that we absolutely do not have four more years to waste on inaction on the climate crisis. 

All this said, I recognize the deep truths that Chris has long been shining bright light on related to the many layers of what has brought us to the precipice that we find ourselves at today. This didn't happen overnight and certainly both political parties have played major roles. Continuing to choose between the lesser of two evils is not sustainable and must be transformed if we are to save ourselves and life on Earth.

I believe that it is essential for us to courageously inform ourselves, deeply and in an ongoing way. There is such great need for more and more of us to be actively engaged in truth-seeking and shedding our indoctrination, ignorance, illusions, and unknowing collusion with what has for so very long been the roots of so much suffering and violence and death. 

Another world is possible. Together we must coordinate and collaborate on getting the truth out and sharing and acting upon visions of a radically different nation and world — one which honors and protects life rather than destroys it. — Molly

Trump raises a fist after being shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Source: screenshot (Reuters)

By CHRIS HEDGES

The assassination of Trump would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader. Most of the leaders of the Christian right have built cult followings of their own. These Christian fascists embraced magical thinking, attacked their enemies as agents of Satan and denounced reality-based science and journalism long before Trump did. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, soon to explode in another financial crisis.

The efforts by the Democratic Party and much of the press, including CNN and The New York Times, to discredit Trump, as if our problems are embodied in him, are futile. The smug, self-righteousness of this crusade against Trump only contributes to the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. This crusade attempts to reduce a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It is accompanied by a refusal to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. This collusion with the forces of corporate oppression, which have impoverished the working class, fostered endless war, militarized our police, created the largest prison system in the world, licensed corporations to exploit the most vulnerable and transferred wealth upwards into the hands of a billionaire class, neuters the press, Trump's critics and the Democratic Party.

Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislative bodies, the courts and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must, like resistance movements of the past, engage in acts of sustained mass civil disobedience, especially strikes, and non-cooperation. By turning our ire on the corporate state, rather than Trump, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays and others. We give people an alternative to a bankrupt Democratic Party — whose presidential candidate is in clear cognitive decline — that is a full partner in corporate oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this militancy, which alone has the ability to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny.

Please go here for the original: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/my-thoughts-on-the-attempted-trump

Bill McKibben: The GOP Climate Plan Is...Way Worse Than the Taliban's? Not To Mention Every Other Country On Earth

When the Taliban was out of power, Afghanistan had a surprisingly robust climate movement. This is from a demonstration in 2012

By BILL MCKIBBEN

We are in a period of almost incomprehensible political drama—the debate, the assassination attempt, the scary veep. I haven’t agreed with Bernie Sanders about everything recently, but I think he was right when he told an interviewer Sunday that “politics should be kind of boring,” as in a “serious discussion of serious ideas as to how we address the serious problems facing this country.”

So as the Republicans gather in Milwaukee for their convention, let’s try and have that discussion. Which is a little hard because on key issues—in this case climate—the Republican platform says…nothing. Its platform doesn’t mention that we’ve just come through the hottest year in the last 125,000, it doesn’t mention fire or flood or drought. Instead, its short list (five) of “core threats to our very survival as a nation” it lists “crippling restrictions on American Energy Production,” and it promises

We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL and we will become Energy Independent, and even Dominant again. The United States has more liquid gold under our feet than any other Nation, and it’s not even close. The Republican Party will harness that potential to power our future.

In terms of specific promises, it makes only a couple (all with the odd random capitalization typical of Trump’s tweets): “terminating the Socialist Green New Deal” (which shouldn’t be hard, since it wasn’t ever enacted) and “streamline permitting, and end market-distorting restrictions on Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.” Its short list of areas where it will champion innovation begins with “Crypto” (“We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital Assets, and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control”) and doesn’t mention renewable energy, which is by far the fastest-growing “innovation” on planet earth.

Indeed, if climate change is mentioned in Milwaukee at all this week, it will be only to scorn the whole idea. As the former president said at a recent Virginia rally, “Global warming is fine. In fact, I heard it was going to be very warm today. It’s fine.” So button it, all you scientists and other wackos. “The ocean will rise, maybe, and it may go down, also,” Trump added. “But it may rise one eighth of an inch in the next 497 years, they say, one eighth, which gives you a little bit more waterfront property if you’re lucky enough to own.”

The Democratic platform is, by contrast, sober and—well—responsibly and normally boring, in the tradition of party platforms. It says things like:

Going forward, Democrats will keep working to incentivize investment in transmission upgrades and new lines, and in the grid-component manufacturing that’s needed to support that growth. We will improve and speed up the processes of environmental review and clean-energy permitting; and further scale up development of clean energy on public lands. 

And this, from the press release the

Democrats will scale up solar, wind, and geothermal projects made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act and invest in clean energy R&D to build America’s legacy as a nation of new frontiers and possibilities. President Biden will expand the clean energy workforce, with a goal of tripling the size of the American Climate Corps by the end of this decade and making sure the clean energy and manufacturing jobs of tomorrow are open and accessible to communities that have been too often left out in the past. We’ll  also eliminate tens of billions of dollars in unfair oil and gas subsidies and hold oil and gas executives accountable for potential collusion or price gouging. We will continue to implement the president’s Executive Order on Environmental Justice for all.

This is straightforward and reasonable. Biden—who, it must be said, has seen the US pumping more oil and gas than every other country, and every other time—has also cleared the ground for a transition to renewable energy; the IRA has moved us toward that goal faster than most thought possible. Given four more years the momentum will be irreversible—which is precisely why the fossil fuel industry is piling in behind Trump. They know that this is their last chance to slow the solar and wind train, and buy themselves an extra decade or two of high-profit relevance. As Texas A&M professor Andrew Dessler told the Times,

“Their No. 1 agenda is to continue producing fossil fuels,” said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences and the director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M University. “Once you understand their main goal is to entrench fossil fuels regardless of anything else, everything makes sense.”

In some ways, the most apt comparison of GOP policy is not with the Democrats—its with the rest of the world. Like, all the world. The Washington Post’s Rick Noack has a poignant story this week on the efforts of the Taliban to deal with the devastation wrought by climate change on Afghanistan. I am no fan of the Taliban—between denying young women the chance to go to school and blowing up the Buddha statues at Bamiyan, they’d lost me even before 9/11. But on climate change they’re striving to be part of the normal world

While Taliban beliefs are rooted in centuries-old Pashtun culture and an extreme interpretation of Islam, the government affirms that climate change is real, that it’s destroying God’s work and that those in the world who reject the truth of climate change need to get on board. The Taliban has asked imams in Afghanistan’s tens of thousands of mosques to emphasize during Friday prayers the need for environmental protection.

Carbon footprints will weigh heavily on judgment day, said Kabul-based imam Farisullah Azhari. “God will ask: How did you make your money? And then he will ask: How much suffering did you cause in the process?” he said in an interview.

Lots of suffering, as it turns out. As the Post reports, “with parched deserts and deforested, flood-prone valleys, Afghanistan is deemed by researchers to be among the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change. Hundreds of people died, for instance, during recent flash floods that officials blamed on ominous changes in the climate.” It’s not their fault, and they know that too. “Just like they invaded our country, they’ve invaded our climate,” Lutfullah Khairkhwa, the Taliban’s deputy higher education minister, said in his opening speech at a Jalalabad climate conference. “We must defend our climate, our water, our soil to the same extent we defend ourselves against invasions.”

But of course that’s impossible—there’s now way to head off high pressure systems and scorching heatwaves. The only hope is international cooperation—something the Taliban prevents with its human rights record, and something the Trump regime will prevent by once again pulling us out of the Paris accords. When that happens, the U.S.—biggest contributor by far to the stock of atmospheric gases now warming the planet—will be the only nation on earth not taking part in the effort to rein in the warming. Which would be…Not Boring.

Please go here for the original article: https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/the-gop-climate-plan-isway-worse

EXCELLENT — Dr. Lissa Rankin: Internal Family Systems (IFS) Is A Game-Changer For Medicine, Psychiatry, & The Spiritual Path

In the midst of plenty of hard and scary news, there are also these bright lights that hearten me and help to provide much needed balance and grounding. There is so much to hold and to grieve. That said, gratitude is also essential. In these hurting times, I am also once again reminded of the wise words of Mr. Rogers — look for the helpers. And, hopefully, more and more of us as human beings are also able to find deeper and deeper resources within ourSelves to help us navigate with grace, courage and compassion, and wisdom and love these times that we find ourselves in.

There's much beauty and gratitude and health and compassion and love that I am blessed with experiencing every day. And there is this ever growing wisdom, deepening healing and awareness, and greater capacity to hold it all. At its core is the love embodied in what Richard Schwartz refers to as our Self, or as Dr. Lissa calls it our Inner Pilot Light — something which I believe is at the sacred core of us all.

In recent weeks and months, and actually over the course of many years, one significant aspect of my journey of healing and transformation has been through IFS — Internal Family Systems. This is not just something I've experienced in my own therapy and a life that is increasingly Self-led, but also a modality of deep healing and spiritual practice that I am hearing more and more about from so many different sources. This fills me with hope. It is revolutionary, deeply empowering, and holds great potential for us as individuals, within our relationships and families and communities, and also collectively in our world. It is truly a game-changer.

Today I have been exploring the work of Dr. Lissa Rankin, who I have learned about through my dear longtime friend Olivia Oso. And I am yet once again so very grateful. Such a gift, one which I moved to offer to all who may also find this helpful and empowering on your journeys. 💗 Molly

* * *

For the video reading of the essence of this 

blog post, please also see this:

The Basics of Internal Family Systems (IFS)

with Dr. Lissa Rankin

* * *

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Is A Game-Changer 

For Medicine, Psychiatry, & The Spiritual Path

In my blog “Why It Doesn’t Help To Demonize Your Ego, Your Mind or Your Protector Parts,” I alluded to how much I resonate with Internal Family Systems (IFS), the trauma healing method developed by family therapist Richard Schwartz, PhD. When I was first introduced to the therapeutic model, I had goose bumps all over my body, because IFS is the “how” of how to lead an Inner Pilot Light-led life.

What I’ve been calling your Inner Pilot Light Dick Schwartz calls “Self” (with a capital S). But after hashing out whether we’re talking about the same thing over breakfast at Esalen, Dick and I concluded that the Self and the Inner Pilot Light are the same thing. While he uses language that is more psychologically oriented and my language is more spiritual, when you boil it down, we’re talking about what Mark Nepo describes so eloquently— “Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the Center of our Love.”

Well, Dick calls it Self and I call it your Inner Pilot Light. For ten years I’ve been writing daily love letters from your Inner Pilot Light (you can subscribe to them at InnerPilotLight.com) and if you want to binge on love letters, you can order my new book The Daily Flame here. But this is not just about some warm fuzzy way to snuggle in with your inner Beloved and get the reparenting you really need. It’s a total game changer, not just as a transformational spiritual path, but as treatment for every psychiatric diagnosis in the DSM-5 and perhaps every medical diagnosis as well. No biggie . . .

(Dick Schwartz and I will be presenting a workshop as a pre-conference event before the IFS conference in Denver in September on the implications of IFS in medicine.)

The HOW Of How To Connect With Your Inner Pilot Light

One of the most common questions people ask me is “How can I get more connected to my Inner Pilot Light?” When I first got introduced to IFS, I realized that although IFS is positioned as a trauma healing psychotherapeutic tool, it is really a deep spiritual practice and a lifelong path of spiritual attunement. Although I’ve studied and practiced many spiritual traditions, including the mystical branches of many religions (Christian mystics, Kabbalah, Sufism, and many flavors of Tantra yoga), as well as indigenous spirituality/animism, no tradition boils down the way I actually practice my spirituality like IFS does. IFS gives us the tools traditional meditative paths often don’t. It’s the “how” of how to deal with the “monkey mind.” It’ a non-demonizing, non-pathologizing, non-bypassing path to radical Self love, healing, transformation, and compassion for all your many “parts.”

What Is IFS?

If you saw the brilliant children’s movie Inside Out (watch the trailer here), you already have a taste of what IFS is all about. Inside this little girl’s head, you see all the warring “parts” fighting to take over the control panel of the little girl’s behavior. But in the case of the movie, this little girl lacks what Dick calls “Self-leadership” or what I call “Inner Pilot Light leadership.” When there’s no leader, there’s only the chatter of polarized parts, duking it out for who will control what you call YOU.

According to the IFS model, we all have multiple personalities, or what Dick calls “parts.” You are not just one being; you (and me and all of us) are a multiplicity of “parts,” but this is not usually a problem because you also have what IFS calls the Self (or Inner Pilot Light). In other words, your “internal family” is populated with a whole busload of inner children, and if you’re reasonably healthy, your Inner Pilot Light is driving the bus, keeping the lovely, sometimes naughty, often unruly, scared, overprotective, and sometimes reckless, addicted, dissociative, sociopathic, or even suicidal parts from grabbing the wheel and hijacking the bus.

The only difference between us “mentally healthy” folks and the ones the psychiatric community labels as “Dissociative Identify Disorder” (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, which was popularized by the 1976 movie Sybil) is that most of us have at least some “Self-leadership” guiding and reining in the parts, whereas those who are completely dissociated may have no leadership and it’s a parts free-for-all. Even if that’s the case, Dick Schwartz doesn’t demonize or pathologize even frightening dissociative parts. He also doesn’t pathologize addict parts, eating disorder parts, cutting parts, rage parts, psychopath parts, or even suicide parts. In all of these cases, he argues that these parts need love, compassion, and a strong healthy “Self” to love them, understand them, become intimate with them, and help them get that you know they’re just trying to protect you. Then, if you approach these parts with curiosity, compassion, and care, the way you might approach a scared or traumatized child, these extreme parts can start to relax so your Inner Pilot Light (Self) can heal the vulnerable, wounded parts they protect, which he calls the “exiles.”

Protector Parts & Exiled Parts

Managers

In the IFS model, parts are either “protectors” or “exiles.” Some protector parts are “managers” who try to preemptively protect you by warding off danger. (Think Inner Critic part, Perfectionist part, Anxious part, Time Keeper part, Financial Manager part, Worst Case Scenario Catastrophizing part, yada yada yada.) Their main job is to be the first line of defense, protecting the vulnerable, wounded, hurting “exile” parts from getting triggered and evoking intensely painful emotions that might take you out of commission. (Their biggest fear is that these exiled parts will flood you with painful emotions and you’ll get overwhelmed and fail to function the way you need to.)

Firefighters

The next line of defense are the “firefighter” protector parts. These firefighters come online as emergency back up if the managers fail to keep the exiles effectively locked up in exile. They grab their firefighting tools if anyone (including you) get too close to the pain the exiles are feeling when they’re locked away, usually buried in your subconscious, beyond your conscious awareness but nevertheless always influencing your behavior and experiences. The firefighters are saddled with intense roles which often don’t look like protection and are more likely to be pathologized by the medical and psychological world. When you think about firefighters, think “Addict part, Rage part, Eating Disorder part, Abuser part, Binge part, Dissociative part, Psychopath part, Narcissist part, Suicidal part, Narcoleptic part, Psychotic part.” In other words . . . think pretty much everything in the psychiatric DSM-5 (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, created by the American Psychiatric Association as a way to label, diagnose, and standardize treatment for psychiatric disorders).

But firefighters do not only show up as psychiatric illnesses. They can also show up as physical illnesses—or other parts can use some physical vulnerability in your system to take you out. Think Migraine part, Back Pain part, Chronic Fatigue part, Asthma part, or even Cancer part. I’m not suggesting that these are purely psychosomatic illnesses (and neither is Dick). But according to the IFS model, your protector parts may pull out all the stops and use your physical body to try to protect you from getting too close to your traumatized exiles if they think they need to. So . . . as a physician interested in interdisciplinary cross-pollinations of healing, this is where Dick got my attention.

Protecting The Exiles

Why would parts that think they’re protecting you pull such potentially harmful stunts? Why would they use anorexia or an addiction or cutting or dissociation or even cancer to try to protect you? Because they know not what they do. (This is where it gets a bit complicated, so stay with me here and let’s play with getting curious and keeping an open mind.)

No matter how idyllic you think your childhood was, we all have vulnerable wounded parts (exiles). No one is exempt from the “burdens” these exiles carry. Our exiles might have different stories and different wounding, but they tend to have the same painful feelings—worthlessness, unlovability, “not enough-ness,” shame, feeling damaged or broken or thinking they are fundamentally flawed. Because your protector parts don’t like the feelings these exiled parts evoke, they unwittingly exacerbate the problems, locking these exiles in a kind of inner prison, so they’re crying and screaming and begging for your attention all the time. The more traumatic the wounding, the more the exiles will pull out all the stops to get your attention, so the more powerful the protectors must become. The managers might be able to keep things under control for a while, but over time, as the exiles get more unruly and the managers fail to keep the exiles under wraps, the firefighters might be needed to further shut down these intensely wounded parts.

All the exiles want is your love, your care, your nurturing, your understanding. They want you to listen to how much pain they experience. They want you to remember what happened to them and acknowledge it, rather than pushing it away. They want an ally, not a jailkeeper. But they can’t seem to get through to you, because the two lines of protection (managers and firefighters) do their best to keep you from even remembering, feeling, or being present with these sweet, young, tender, hurt exiles.

These exiles are crying for the love of your Inner Pilot Light, which is the part that’s not a part, the inner healer, therapist, mentor, parent, and Beloved that has what it takes to heal these wounded parts, if only your protector parts learn to trust that your Inner Pilot Light can care for them better than these jailkeeper protectors can.

The Solution: Unburdening The Exiles

While protecting the exiles might help to keep your internal family system safe for a while, it requires a great deal of energy to keep those exiles in prison. All the energy your protectors expend trying to keep the exiles under wraps could be used for creativity, self-healing, service, spiritual connection, playfulness, intimacy with others, and general vitality. But because that energy is getting used up by protectors, you might feel chronically tired, depleted, depressed, anxious, lacking inspiration, lonely, spiritually disconnected, or sick. It makes sense that freeing up these exiles through the IFS “unburdening process” liberates all this trapped energy and functions as a kind of energy healing, freeing up all that extra life force so the life force can work its magic in other aspects of your life.

The unburdening process is best facilitated by a skilled IFS therapist, but over time, it’s something some people can learn to do themselves. Unburdening your exiles requires getting permission from all the protectors that will keep you (or the therapist) from getting direct access to the exile. Once the protectors trust your Inner Pilot Light and allow this inner healer to make contact with the exiled part, demonstrating some curiosity, compassion, care, and other qualities of the Self that reassure the exiled part that the real YOU are here, the exile is ready to be unburdened. This is the real trauma CLEARING part. (Many other trauma therapies do not really cure the trauma or release it from the energy system, psyche, or body.)

Steps of Unburdening

WITNESS: Once protectors have relaxed and made space, the Inner Pilot Light approaches the exiled part and makes itself know. Once connection is made, the exile is invited to enter a space in the inner world where she can show your Inner Pilot Light everything she wants you to know—memories, images, sensations, sounds, intense emotions. Your Inner Pilot Light simply holds space and witnesses the exiled part’s pain.

REDO: When the exile has shown you everything it wants to, your Inner Pilot Light goes back in time and enters the scene to do a “redo” of what should have happened (the exile will instruct how it should have gone). With a kind of active imagination in your inner vision, you redo the scene, following orders from the exile and giving this little one what she really needed, which didn’t happen back then but can happen now.

RETRIEVE: When the redo is complete, you rescue the exile from that stuck place back in time and take the exile someplace peaceful and relaxing (the exile will tell your Inner Pilot Light where it wants to go to feel safe and peaceful).

UNBURDEN: Your Inner Pilot Light invites the exile to let go of all toxic beliefs, feeling states, and sensations which have been stuck since the original traumatic event. (Your exile will usually be happy to give it up to the elements—wind, water, fire, earth, light, or some other way of letting go.)

INVITE: You invite the exile to invite in new supportive, positive qualities to fill the space created by the unburdening.

PROTECTOR CHECK-IN: Once the exile is safely in its new place with its newly installed programs, the protectors who stepped aside to let the Inner Pilot Light do the healing are invited to come see how the exile is doing. (Usually the exile is pretty relaxed or even blissed out and the protectors feel happy and relieved.) The protectors learn over time that the Inner Pilot Light does a better job protecting and healing than the (usually young) protectors do. The exile will tell you how often it wants to be visited by the Inner Pilot Light in the inner world in order for the unburdening to be permanent (usually a daily check in for a minimum of thirty days makes the healing permanent).

Why Demonizing Your Parts Makes Things Worse

You might think you need to discipline, bully, harass, or even attack these potentially pathologized parts into submission in order to avoid the damage they can do. But as any person who has wrestled with an out of control firefighter can tell you, willpower is not enough here. Demonizing these firefighters only ramps up the firefighting behavior. Why? Because they genuinely think they’re helping you­—and in some way you may not understand yet—they are. Your Inner Pilot Light’s job is to become intimate with them and discover why they think they’re helping you, what they’re afraid would happen if they quit doing their job, and who they think they’re trying to protect.

As long as your parts are at war with each other, your firefighters are going to keep taking you out. Let me give you an example of a classic triad of parts. Let’s say you have an inner critic manager who is trying to get you to stop overeating. So the inner critic shames you and yells at you until you’re in so much pain from the shaming that your ashamed exile, who believes he’s worthless and unlovable, starts to have all kinds of painful emotions that break through into your consciousness until your binge part firefighter screams, “ENOUGH!” and downs a whole gallon of ice cream to try to numb the painful feelings the exile is feeling. Now the exile is silenced, but the inner critic starts shaming you again for being such a worthless, lame, pathetic pig, and now the exile starts crying again—and the cycle continues. No wonder New Years Resolutions rarely work with discipline and willpower alone!

These polarized parts continue their inner war your whole life unless you choose to get help and end the war. As long as your parts are at war with each other, you’ll always be at war with other people and you’ll never feel a true sense of sustained belonging, which will only trigger your parts even more and make your firefighter act out. I’ll go as far as saying that IFS—and letting your Inner Pilot Light take the lead—is peacemaking work. After all, how can we possibly expect to stop wars in the world when there’s an inner war going on? If your inner critic is at war with your addict part, or if your perfectionist part is at war with your procrastinator part, or if your spiritual bullying part is trying to meditate away your monkey mind, you’re not loving your parts. You’re at war with them, and that energy of war will come out sideways. We can’t love the extreme or vulnerable parts of others until we can love the extreme and vulnerable parts of ourselves. Only then is real love possible. Only then is peace on earth within the realm of possibility.

Unlearning Your Way Back To God

This is what it might take if you really want to heal your mental illness, your physical illness, your spiritual disconnection, and your relationships with others. It all starts with becoming intimate with your Inner Pilot Light and letting it become intimate with all of your parts.

To quote Mark Nepo again, “To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core. When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of Satori as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education. Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God.”

Additional Resources

If this resonates with you and you want to deepen your journey, here are a few resources that might help.

1. Start working with a trained IFS therapist. You can find IFS-trained therapists here.

2. Read Richard Schwartz’s book You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For. Those who are interested in practicing IFS will appreciate the Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual. Both of these highly recommended self-published books are cheaper at SelfLeadership.org than they are on Amazon. [I would also add Dick Schwartz's most recent book No Bad Parts.]

3. Sign up for my free Daily Flame emails at InnerPilotLight.com. You can also find links to order The Daily Flame book, the Connect To Your Inner Pilot Light online program, or the Sounds True Inner Pilot Light audio program I did with Tami Simon at Inner Pilot Light.com.

4. Join the Healing Soul Tribe where others on a healing journey, whether healing from illness or trauma, support each other in leading an IFS-informed Inner Pilot Light-led life as a practice of healing and spiritual awakening. (If you sign up for just one month of the Healing Soul Tribe, you’ll also get a teleclass with me teaching about IFS, so all members of the Healing Soul Tribe can communicate with the same IFS-informed language.)

5. Take an IFS-informed workshop with me (learn more about my live events here) or with IFS founder Richard Schwartz (learn more about Dick’s events here).

5. Attend the IFS conference in Denver in September. I’ll be co-leading a preconference workshop with Dick Schwartz about IFS & Medicine, but we haven’t worked out all the details yet. Conference details are here.

With love for you and all your multiplicity of parts,

Please go here for the original blog post: https://lissarankin.com/internal-family-systems-ifs/