From Soup to Nuts: Unified Diversity Sans "Isms"

The Animals say that we've created diverse sub-species within the overall human Animal species that don't serve our collective good. We're more apt to stay in those 'pseudo-species' where it's comfortable and known to us, rather than reach beyond to create authentic equity for all human Animals. The more we can drop the individual-isms in diversity, the more we can celebrate the unified diversity in which we all share.

https://www.healthline.com/health/what-is-ableism#takeaway

Transcript

I'm Lizanne Flynn. I'm a master healer who holds space for any Earthling as they reunite body and soul. I am a bridge for relationships between all species so that 

the heart bond becomes stronger, deeper, and more loving. I serve in the roles of animal communicator, medium, and medical intuitive, and I use the tools of shamanic journeying and soul retrieval 

to support all Earthlings in their recovery from past trauma. I'm certified as a canine massage therapist and Reiki Master Teacher. This is the Animals' iView podcast.

This week's podcast comes courtesy of my various forays into social media, those that went well - or so I thought - and those that didn't go so well. As I've often said - no good comes from commenting on a stranger's post on FB or X-Twitter or Instagram or any of them, quite honestly. It made me that much more aware of the cultural norms that we create within our min-tribes if you will and at the cost of the larger societal norms whose landscape seems to be rapidly shifting. And you know, even if it rapidly shifts, we're really terrible at avoiding the sand traps or the quicksand that come as a result of our insistence that it does not shift so rapidly, thank you very much. At least for us in our corner of  - what I'm being told to say - the kitty litterbox/sandbox of human experience and our interactions with each other. Yikes! That's hardly a ringing endorsement for how well we play or don't play with each other, right? Because the fact of the matter is - we don't. We're keen enough to set up our rules and 'guidelines' for our particular group and we'll get to how we 'group' together in a minute and woe to those newcomers to the group or those who otherwise transgress those group rules. Fangs are bared, claws are drawn, and hackles are raised in an instant. Heck, we don't even have the degrees of reaction that Animals do. With Dog as an example, it usually starts with some lip licking or stress yawns to communicate being uncomfortable. In another minute or so the Elvis lip curl might appear and/or a low growl in the throat. There might be a hard stare and an equally fixed tail raised like a flag. Then, there's usually a pause to see if the receiver got the message of "back the eff up". From there it might be an air snap or a bark along with the previous signs with the time between all of these and the unavoidable outcome of teeth to body if there wasn't a shift in what's perceived as a threat. With Cat, it's a similar thing. The puffing up of the body and tail to look bigger, the low growl along with a hiss comes in. There may be some initial backing up and it won't be too long until the front paw comes out - not yet with claws extended perhaps - to whap whap the heck outa of the offender of Cat's space. And if all of those fail to elicit the desired response, there will be more hissing and growling along with a scream of "IT'S WAR NOW" and biting and clawing both front and back will ensue. I'm hearing an imitation of Mr. T's - "I pity the fool" said as Dog and Cat everywhere nod their heads in knowing exactly what happened.

We seem to have a pretty low threshold of feeling transgressed upon at least from the Animals point of view. They say that the individualism we elevate above the collective is the cause of our insecurity with each other and that reverberates into the group alliances we hold onto as a mirror of usually, our wounds. If you look at this from a thousand-foot perspective for just a second here's what the Animals say exists for us. We all have the same physical form design as human Animal. Period. We have a skeleton, muscles on top of that, nerves and organs squished in a bit that's held together by tendons and ligaments and covered with skin, furry in some places for protection, with a head containing eyes, ears, and a nose. We have appendages such as two arms and two legs, fingers, and toes at the respective ends of those appendages that are protected by hardened keratin. We have eyebrows and eyelashes protecting our eyes and in most cases, we have two of what we need externally so if we lose one, we can just depend more on the other. And powering everything below the surface is the magnificent life force Energy, aka, soul that stitches all of our lifetimes together. Wowsa - that's quite a setup on this planet, right? Our bodies were tailor-made to exist on this planet alongside all other species because look around you. There is literally nothing on this planet that is not provided for you! There's water that your body needs, there's oxygen, there's shelter, there's warmth from the sun. Truly, we have it as the saying goes - made in the shade. Everything would be quite grand if we didn't focus overly much on what sets us apart from the person next to us and as importantly, attempt to set ourselves apart and over the person next to us and in a truly heinous way - punish them for being different than we are. What the ever-lovin' eff is up with that? Because you know that's the thing that really gets the Animals going. That we implode amongst ourselves because we think there's only one way to be based on the color of our skin, our culture, our privilege, our ancestors, our actual way of be-ing that keeps our Soul Energy in the a double asterisk of human experience. Just now I'm being shown a cartoon-like picture of a person bending their head between their legs so that their nose ends up poking out between the butt cheeks. How can we possibly see with any clarity or neutrality how we are destroying any semblance of unified diversity - note which word comes first - if we're not looking up, out, and beyond our own experience?

And you know, I get it. From the micro point of view, everybody has stuff going on in their lives. We are not going to go to the thief of joy - comparison - on this one and I heard something the other day about positivity being toxic, from Professor Kate Bowler of Duke University. Once we go down the road of comparing who is worse off as compared to what the other person has that's game over. Because we force ourselves to be nonauthentic with our lives at the cost of another person's life either being better or not in our own opinion. What is that about? How can I say, "Well, my body has POTS (Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) a condition in which a change from lying to standing causes an abnormally large increase in heart rate brain fog, blurred vision, weakness, fatigue, headaches, heart palpitations, exercise intolerance and more and my BFF's body "just" has MS - this is a true story, by the way. My BFF doesn't have to plan her day like I do, she gets to do the activities I can't do, I have to be so careful and she doesn't and she's better off than I am." Yikes - does anyone else feel that schism of separateness and envy vs embrace and compassion of - bottom line - in this lifetime, two human Animals in a relationship each have physical issues with their bodies that affect them emotionally and mentally. We slide so easily into the place of feeling put upon that we forget not to take anyone down with us. And trust me - I've been there before. Especially these days when my lower body has less and less functionality and I grieve inside when others talk about their hikes and getting out in Nature to feel the sun and the breeze and hear the birds - just all of it. And yes, I will soon find ways to do that for myself such as a walker or an electric bike but I gotta say - not once have I thought, "Oh, their lives are much better than mine because they get to hike and do the things I can't." I'm genuinely happy for those people and I rejoice because they still get to do those things - why would I want to take away something from someone that I don't have that they still do? I don't get it. The true story I referred to isn't mine, it was on X-Twitter as I referenced earlier. Because the BFF did have MS I did comment and ask if the person with POTS knew the inside story of her BFF's experience with MS. How did she know it was easier for her? Did she ask about fatigue and maybe that could be a unifying - misery loves company - kind of thing. And boy, did I get called out for missing the point (apparently) of not understanding the POTS experience. Others said that I wasn't understanding the difficulty of the POTS chronic illness and how when compared with MS, "we" - as in MS patients - have all the best drugs with which to now combat MS and that there was little to no research being done with POTS, etc. It devolved into an us vs them, IMO, POTS vs MS and my not understanding the POTS POV. I daresay I wasn't being understood of how to look beyond the human experience and not use another disabled individual's body against them - I think that's ableism which is defined as any prejudice, bias, and discrimination directed toward people living with disabilities. Another way to put it  "the discriminatory action (or lack of action), language, or thought flow from one’s own innate assumptions about the disabled lived condition." Breaking that down - discriminate is to recognize or identify as separate and distinct, discrimination is prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment, and finally, prejudice is a preconceived judgment or opinion. So yeah, I think the person with POTS made an ableist statement about her BFF with MS. And I tried turning it around so as to distance myself from it. The person with MS comparing the life of her friend with POTS as being better is the same thing to me.   

All of this is not to say that we've not done horrible savage things to each other for eons based on discrimination, prejudice, and individual-isms of our self-identified groups. When I say "we" it's not the queen's we, it is white people. We've bought and sold other humans. We've killed other humans simply because we want their land for ourselves. We've made other humans feel less than simply because they look different or act different or are different. We've created whole structures where the "others" we so despise are traumatized for generations and left to attempt to have the lives they want in a structure that was designed to make sure they don't have those lives. We've pushed ourselves into these reactive, feral sub-groups where the Animals fear our wounds will not ever be healed and unified diversity is but a dream on the horizon with the sun setting fast on that dream never to rise again the next day. And this might be the thing that so astonishes and shocks the other 8 billion species of Animals on the planet the most. That we are so intent upon preserving our own status quo in these groups against others based solely on human experience that we're not really celebrating diversity at all or working toward making sure all are on the same playing field. Because all we see is the difference, the separateness, the you vs me thingy and to quote Thich Nhat Hanh -  “We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” The part of the title of this podcast about soup to nuts has its genesis in a FB group called "Soup Lovers" and for the love of all things holy, do not get into this group! You think to yourself - "C'mon - what can be so bad about a group that loves soup? How is not the group for me?" The phrase, from soup to nuts,  "is an idiom that can mean from beginning to end or to cover every aspect of something. This strange phrase whisks us back to traditional American and British dinners where soup was usually the first course and nuts, well, they were the grand finale." And believe me, this FB group has every kind of nut in it and is the epitome of individual-isms where rather than celebrate soup which I happen to think is the perfect meal with its protein, veggies, broth and rice or noodles or beans or whatever, the main dynamic of the group is to critique in a brusque way - which is putting it nicely - any photo or recipe someone in the group posts. And don't ever announce that you're leaving the group because of the caustic environment because you'll get double the amount of hazing that only an entitled, self-important, and self-aggrandizing minority can give. If their numbers are accurate - 961,00 members and counting - the following is the type of comment you'll see: "I just popped over here and saw y'all losing it over chili. So now I need to start an argument. V8 Juice is an excellent base for chili. Especially when you have kids who hate vegetables. I said what I said. Live with it." This person will likely get along well in the group and me, well, at first I was put off by the unkind, separatism comments. It's like if you didn't know the secret handshake or where to look for soup recipes on the page, you'd be taken to the center of town and pilloried. Then, I saw it as being mildly amusing from an Energy standpoint and definitely not from the people-being-vicious standpoint - both things can be true at once, right? And I think that's the right direction to go in with unified diversity that's currently rife with individual-isms. We must first embrace neutral diversity so that structures are dismantled that don't serve all of us equitably with our individual needs in life and do this without passing judgment or attempting to compare. And in a flipside way, we each do have to choose how to be in order to begin an embrace of unified diversity where the focus is on the unified part and much less the diversity part which sounds odd and may even rankle a bit as if I'm suggesting to lay down your activist sword. It's about looking beyond and as Cheetah says, who's just now come sinuously stepping in - "By not thinking you can't have it all, you actually can have it all. When you stop comparing your life to another's and when you stop thinking you're more than or less than, you begin to arrive at a place full of looking beyond diversity-isms that just don't matter anymore because you're unified in your diversity with others." And at least, that's how the Animals see it.