The catchy title of this blog came to my mother in a dream. I tend to believe dreams, especially my mother's. Dreams and my mother's dreams tend to be signs from The Divine and from the subconscious mind of information and guidance. She passionately texted me from her home in Florida to tell me "Mona, starting January 1st, you're to write a blog called "American living in Paradise...Occupied." While my post didn't start on January 1st, nor did it include in the title 'American,' I think I'm starting to see the value of me writing, and writing a lot to help me process life here. While working on this blog from RamAllah, I'm also working on a book about my life called "Fear: The Sound of Love" as well as FINALLY attempting to complete my Master's Thesis for the 8th time since I started my Master's program in 2004. Words have been hard for me to release because of this fine line I walk daily to not offend anyone and to not be fake. How do you write about anything right now without someone jumping down your throat with a reactionary opinion; let alone three large pieces like a Master's thesis, a book and a blog? Regardless, the tears that I have finally been able to shed show me that I have had a great deal of trapped emotions around my throat and my ability to tell the truth of who I am, what I go through and how I, not you, interpret the world around me based on the countless hours of self education, meditation and prayer I chose to fill my day with.
Oh gosh, I love to learn. It's become an obsession in some ways the vast amount of learning I seek. I love to learn about what's going on in the world and what's really motivating it. I love learning about different cultures, different traditions and especially the documentary style reporting I just soak up, about world events of my day and what really happened or at least what was not reported in the media at the time. Whether the OJ trail, the war in Iraq or the financial crisis of 2008; all of which I lived though really started my journey to understand what in-the-actual-fuck was going on with the financial markets that lead to the absolute collapse of the housing industry in America. Two important segments of my career dealt with working in the commercial and residential real estate markets. It often felt like no matter what industry I chose (limo business before Uber or the airline industry before 9/11) d0cumentaries seem to heal me in some way, feeling less manipulated and a bit more informed about subjects that are often hiding in plane sight. I think many of us love to watch a sports documentary about a team like the Chicago Bulls and are captivated by the truth of Michael Jordan's rise to fame and the team that became a legacy, globally. (Where ever I traveled in the late 90s, when I told them I was from Chicago, they always screamed "Michael Jordan.") When we learn the back story of something it helps us understand a little bit of the whole story. Of course many documentaries and media today are still funded by someone and still edited by someone so I get it I'm not getting 100% of the truth and it's still better than nothing; or is it?
Have I created a fear based relationship to learning EVERYTHING, for some reason? Can I give up a possible addiction to learning that might calm my mind a bit more and ease my imagination? I've come to realize just how special the imagination is, that not many seem to really appreciate. The imagination is where we come up with brilliant looking buildings or amazing dresses or fantastic artwork. The imagination is where our civilizations are cultivated, created and destroyed. The imagination is where we reflect on the world around us and give possibility to change in that environment. What happens though, when a generation of children are fed constant entertainment and distractions? What happens when a society learns to market to children exclusively, even though most children do not have passive income, or disposable income at all? Who inspired the insane amount of breakfast cereals filled with sugar and somehow convinced the government it is ok to market them to children? Whether it was snacks, video games, adventure parks or movie themed toys - children of my era had become so focused on as the main TV audience of consumers, I don't know how my parents survived. This subject begins to explain why my parents were working longer and longer hours as our house grew and grew. Family from all around the world and the children in our house would sit in front of the TV and day dream of the things they wanted - daily! What happens with a house is pushed products and services that are really not healthy for proper child development? What happens...is me ;-/.
"Back-in-my-day," which is such a common phrase amongst adults, of every era, who like to boast and hold over their kids how their life was so much harder than today - "we didn't have countless hours of cartoons!" But seriously, we didn't have a Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon nor were we allowed to spend all day watching cartoons. I admire adults that can sit and watch cartoons with their kids. I have a knee-jerk reaction to too many hours of cartoons and feel like I need to go clean something. Probably because when I was a child, on Saturday mornings I woke up early, before anyone else to catch the cartoons before the TV turned into NBC Sports or some strange show about fishing. I knew that as soon as an adult woke up I would have to start cleaning the house. I like cartoons but they were rare and often not allowed in the house when there was something to clean. Maybe my parents knew the power of the TV and were trying to prevent me from it or maybe they were so exhausted working long hours that they couldn't bare to see a house a mess. That's why waking up early has always been special to me. Get up before everyone and you can do what you want.
I even remember waking up at 5 am before school to see if I could catch some cartoons. My favorite before school was the show JEM. It was about a girl who was a singer by night and a humanitarian during the day. Like an 80s superhero. She had wild pink hair and the most eccentric group of friends with super colored funky outfits. Imagine if Barbie had gone to livc in the inner-city of the 80s. The color choices throughout the cartoon, coloring books and lunch boxes made your eyes wonder. Her humanitarian work was around children and her band was rock. She had an orphanage that she ran during the day and then went to perform at night. I don't remember if she ever used her status as a singer to raise awareness or money for the orphanage but hope so; maybe that's my adult brain working to reconcile a great marketing idea for a cartoon character. Because as a comedian, raising money for other people and their humanitarian projects built my career. Huh?...a comedian standing on stage helping people raise money for causes special to their community. Sounds like what I watched as a child, may have shaped my life as an adult, subconsciously.
Such a special space, the subconscious. The Emotion Code sessions I have with clients is working directly with the subconscious mind, clearing trapped emotions that the body has accumulated through life, absorbed or shared through their environment or inherited before they were born. Clearing the trapped emotions restores balance and harmony in the mind-body connection, while discovering areas of one's life where past unresolved experiences help explain current situations. Finding out how much fear I inherited and absorbed from my family and community really was obvious, because my father is Palestinian. But how much trauma I inherited from my female line due to centuries of hardship was very powerful and helps me contextualize someone's current suffering. Through my own healing journey I have started to pay very close attention to the words people speak and the media I am consuming so as to no create more fear in my body passively. A simple song can create fear and the music industry knows it. A cartoon or movie can insight fear, and the movie industry knows it. Get me started on video games and how their content has gotten more and more dangerous. Simple t-shirts with the face of Heath Ledger's 'Joker' character can infuse the mind with a deep sense of powerless fear, without even realizing. More importantly the Simpsons cartoons can move a whole civilization to vote for a president they dont take seriously, all because his election was subtly promoted in countless show episodes that may have become embedded in the subconscious mind year after year. Leading to a victory that even the candidate himself didn't believe would happen. The Simpsons don't have some magic spell on how to predict the world except knowing, or maybe not knowing that when the human mind sees something over and over it will likely manifest that thing. Aren't we all suddenly bombarded with self-help gurus that talk about the power of manifestation. What about the power of suggestion? When we write fact or fiction, it matters. When we deny a people their rights for ever, it matters. What we say, think, see and do as humans, because of our powerful imagination...it matters! Could the Simpsons have been so careless with our imagination that they possibly killed our favorite basketball hero or elected presidents leveraging our subconscious mind without our real permission? Have we let one of the most important spaces of real estate, our imagination, go for the sake of entertainment so much so that we can't see the difference between what is our imagination and what is someone else's imagination playing out in our life? How many shoes do women of a certain era have because Carie Bradshaw thought was ok to spend a week's salary on her two feet? It might explain why the world has way to many Kardashian look-a-likes. Either intentionally or unintentionally the world doesn't need all of the same, obviously. So the role media, communication, images and thoughts play in my life are very special. Especially while living in paradise...occupied. The way the world used to see Palestinians and the way they see them now is different - however there is still so much more for the world to learn about this area of the world and its indigenous population.
While I may love to learn, what I love more is to see if, with my thoughts, my words and my imagination I can have an impact on my surroundings. If my subconscious mind allowed me to hold space for Biff to become president, then what else could it do? [Biff - See Back to the Future trilogy]
The other day I was walking to the gym, yes they have gyms here in occupation. I was walking to the gym and heard two cats fighting. [Cats in the animal sense, not in the urban vernacular sense - "Ey, yo, that cat over there is real smooth man. Check out his sax skills, they fly." Cat there is used to replace a "cool guy/girl."] Back to the two actual felines I over heard yelling; they startled me with their screams and I felt their fear. So I stopped and focused on their interaction. I saw one cat standing on a ledge and the other on the ground less than a foot away. The cat that was yelling the loudest was the cat beneath the one on the ledge. I instantly felt the cat yelling was defending himself in a way, but not at the same time. While the cat on the ledge was just 'holding space' meaning he wasn't yelling and wasn't leaving he was just there. Instead, he seemed to be dealing with a power dynamic which may turn into a fight and he was ready either way. [Side Note: I dont necessarily know if the cat's were "he" but just for the sake of the story I'm referring to both as he's & hims.] As I stood and watched the two cats in a stand-off, my heart felt connected to this situation and I wanted to know and feel a change before I left. I stood there and started praying and asking Allah to help. I said on repeat "Allah hu Akbar", "Allah hu Akbar", "Allah hu Akbar" over and over and over again. Suddenly, the cats looked and me and felt my loving energy being sent towards them and their situation. I asked Allah to please heal this situation in the highest order and within a few minutes the cats moved and changed positions. The cat doing most of the crying suddenly seemed to quiet and move further away from the cat on the ledge and looked like he felt safer by his body movement. He began to stretch and possibly release energy and fear from his body. Or at least that's what I think I saw. The second cat stood still like he was actually there to support his buddy. Like he had no intention of hurting the cat that was crying but merely standing firm in himself and committed to the situation. Which reminded me of many crying sessions I've had with my mother or my partner. Seeing all this, my husband decided to light a cigarette knowing we'd be here a while.
Gradually the meowing stopped and the cat on the ledge jumped down...then the cat crying jumped on the ledge and became the one towering over the other. And the meowing started again but with less power or passion. Like I was watching karma play out in real life. The cat who was once towering over the crying cat looked up at his friend and again didn't leave, didn't attack and didn't yell. He just remained steadfast in his relationship to the situation. It suddenly felt like the cats were representing me and my struggles here. I suddenly felt I was learning something about my own subconscious mind and this interaction was a possible projection of what I have been dealing with my whole life. Feeling like the big fast loser that no one respects, no one wants and is just annoying or threatening with her power and truth. I felt that the cat that was yelling was me and how I spoke for years trying to get peoples attention to my pain, my needs and my desire to help the world in a real way but felt towered by my family, my culture, my religion, my gender, my looks and on and on and on. Was Allah somehow healing the situation with the cats and teaching me something at the same time. If so, AWESOME! I love that shit!
Soon the cats broke and the cat that was now towering felt somehow safe enough in his leadership over the other to just gradually start to walk away. Leaving the stoic cat staying in the same place watching his friend, calmly leave. When crying cat number 1 felt safe enough to walk away slowly, not run, I felt it was time to head to the gym that the situation ended in the highest order. More than anything I felt that the cat was now possibly carrying less fear than at the beginning of the altercation. Is it possible that the cat was processing fear and his buddy was there to help him release it? I hope so. I hope the cat world can be an inspiration for maybe how humans can be with each other, to be a compassionate listener even when feeling threatened. Helping one another process the fear that shaped us or that has come to us from the environment that seems to be ever more chaotic. Because if the cat world can help us learn to process fear in a healthy way and the dog world can help us feel unconditional love in a healthy way and the birds can teach us to feel real freedom in a healthy way than all the tools I need for a life of paradise is all around me. I mean the cats
were fighting under a palm tree. Doesn't' a palm tree, in the middle of January, just naturally evoke paradise? It always did for me as a kid growing up in snowy ass Chicago! Paradise would be a place where I could connect with Allah instantly in moments of fear, and could connect with the animal world really and instantly see an impact. Paradise to me would be a place where they say Adam and Eve left but is now here and accessible to me and you. A place where we can walk around freely without judgement and instead a connection to a real feeling of pure love, understanding and oneness with the world and the animal kingdom. While also being able to call on the Creator by just using our mind, when we are in moments of distress.
As I walked away with my beautiful husband, [that I still can't believe is my partner cause he's so freakin' dreamy] he said "Do you know what you just did?" Shy, I smiled and felt I didn't do anything but call on the Creator of the Universe to come help me in a station between two cats that the Creator created. I didn't do anything special except believe in my imagination and my heart that a situation could be healed quickly and calmly in front of my eyes, by the Entity that created life in the first place. Why would I as a human think I could get in the middle of a cat fight and think it would not end bloody? Similarly, why would I as a human amongst humans who have built huge buildings with their imagination, be made to feel that I don't matter enough to find a way to help the situation. I knew that if I could focus my heart energy and deep respect and love for Allah's universe then maybe I could make a difference. If so, then that would be the coolest thing EVER! Like a video game, where I'm super Mario and the life I live is like just jumping through random tunnels trying to collect enough coins to keep me busy while I try to save the Queen at the end. Only, in this video game I already have the super beautiful and amazing King next to me celebrating our video game life, while sharing the coins and all the wild journeys to real freedom together. A girl can imagine.
The children of the 80s were marketed to heavily but also taught about the impact of the late 60s and how Martin Luther King Jr was killed for his dreams of making the world a better place. We were shown on TV images of space launches only for the Challenger exploded in our face while in school. We were young and impressionable when the Berlin Wall finally came down. We were also in highschool when OJ Simpson got away with murder. 80s kids have a unique way of seeing the world because of the unique world we've been seeing so drastically change its rules, regulations and collective imagination - headline after headline. We didn't know therapy was cool until it was too late and we had to find ways to safely navigate and world in person and eventually online that seemed so angry and confusing. When I really got how impactful the trapped emotion of 'confusion' is and saw life more clearly having removed it...I saw how manipulated I was in my desire to make the world a better place.
That is why I've stated The Lighthause - a space for real honest healing that doesn't cost a thing. Sessions I hold are so powerful, I literally have been guided to not charge for them. Folks can donate and contribute to me and The Lighthause but all session are free. Those of use who struggle to understand the work-life balance because the capitalization of everything has gotten too much - you are right! You're so right and you're so right where you belong. We aren't supposed to commercialize play, and water and air. That mentality came with real side effects that we are seeing now played out in realtime. So if you feel called to explore a deeper level of your emotional freedom, join us on Wednesdays on Zoom where we host a FREE Open House on the Emotion Code and have sessions for anyone interested. I'm attempting to help as many humans as I can while I'm on this Earth so one day I'd love to heal you and possibly cut through the deep trapped emotions of Confusion that shaped our world over the last 50 years and possibly, in your lifetime, reveal a beautiful Paradise...Un-occupied!