Dear friend,

I hope this message finds you well.

May has been very busy for me! I went from Compassion Cultivation Teachers' Training to presenting at the APA on girls breaking gender norms and narcissism in the American psyche to CAAMFest! It was a coming to critical mass of ideas and intentions, resulting in an outpouring on my Memoirs of a Superfan film blog. It was an awakening experience, a transpersonal and powerful time of synthesizing a lot that's been fermenting in my soul. The wound is the womb for the journey. During CAAMFest, I felt my personal wounds and their intersection with the wounds of the world very deeply. What resulted was a tsunami of words and ideas that I surfed as best I could with mindfulness, compassion and relationship (These Three Things). It wasn't perfect, it depended on the generous listening and feedback of a few friends, but I think it'll all square out in time. I'm grateful to my friends and mother especially. May is Mental Health Awareness month - and no one gets through life by themselves. Total self-reliance is a myth, Ralph Waldo Emerson notwithstanding.

Also, if you know of venues or organizations that would be interested in hosting my Narcissism in the American Psyche and Social Media talk with or without a workshop on Mindful Self-Compassion, please let me know :)

Upcoming events and podcasts first, then to the MOSF blogs! Purchase links and more about Facebuddha and Guns Are Not Our God! online. Sign up for news about the compassion workshops at sflovedojo.org. I'm still thinking of to whom to offer my first 8 week Mindful Self-Compassion workshop. Let me know if you have suggestions or possibilities.

Events:

Saturday, June 2nd
6-8 pm
Oakland Asian Cultural Center
388 9th Street
Suite 290
Oakland, CA 94607
Free tickets at Eventbrite

Sunday, June 3rd
7-8 pm
KPFA - FM radio 94.1
Listen Live online or on air or find archives for Talk It Out with Marlena Willis

Monday June 18th
6-7 pm
South San Francisco Library
Author talk
SSF Main Library
840 W. Orange Ave.
South San Francisco
Details here

Podcasts:

COMING SOON!

Is Facebook a stressor? A wideranging conversation on social media wih Alison Rose Levy 
of the Progressive Radio Network, discussing relationship, activism, the media more broadly and the deeper theme of being a human being in year 2018

Memoirs of a Superfan

MOSF 13.5: Norman Mineta, Integrity and the American Psyche

"There are two things that each one of us owns that nobody else does and we have to protect. One is our name. The other is our reputation and our integrity."- Secretary Norman Mineta. This post brought together my work at the APA with Asian American history and this moment in American history, with all our questions about narcissism, and imperiled integrity and trust in government and each other, on the Opening Night of CAAMFest 36.

MOSF 13.6: Asian American Han

     A Zen teacher once asked me, “the disease is suffering. The world is medicine. So what is the self?"
     These are the kinds of things I think and write about. And then I wonder why I’m not popular, why I’m not blowing up like Beyoncé....
     Two Korean American women were in tears Friday night after Vivian Bang’s brilliant WHITE RABBIT(which will get a release in September and is playing at Frameline on June 19, 2018)...I felt exactly the same way, and as far as I know, I’m not a 32-year old Korean American woman. Unless I’m transitioning in some really cool and difficult way that hasn’t really been disclosed to me properly. I don’t know, maybe I signed the consent forms in my last life, or in some hazy, mysterious dream?

MOSF 13.7: I didn't land in America. America landed on me.

     What does it mean to be an immigrant? It’s not just going to another place. It’s taking on new challenges and a new way of life...
      I say all this because I feel like I just immigrated to America this weekend. Today, Monday, is my third day in this country, and I’m not quite sure where I am, or how things work. What’s the social order? How do I get things done? What will I be allowed to do here? Who will be my friends? What new languages will I have to learn to communicate with the locals? What new thoughts will I have to have to cope with all the changes? Who was I yesterday, and who will I be tomorrow? What will be possible, what’s in the cards? What’s going on, in this new place? Which brand of toilet tissue should I buy? There are so many, there are so many.

This post describes my experience of emotional "backdraft" that weekend, feeling blowback from opening a window of compassion and insight within myself and opening the floodgates. I surfed through all this, but I turned into a space cadet as well.

MOSF 13.8: Meditation Park

     Mina Shum said in the Q and A after MEDITATION PARK that the title refers both to an actual place in Vancouver, but also the quality of reflecting. Boy did that resonate with me. Sometimes we get so caught up in reacting to our stressors and the things that we find wrong, that we lose track of who we are as individuals and who we want to be. Reacting changes you. Some of you may not know this (LOL) but I tend to be a reflective human being, sometimes to the point of analysis paralysis. But I’ve also been very reactive as well. There will always be an angry young man at the core of who I am as a human being." Because...injustice, racism, hatred, etc....

MOSF 13.9: Revival and Arrival

     Even a collection of shorts can rock my world. On Wednesday night, WOMEN ON THE RISE: SOUTH KOREAN SHORTS pretty much had me wrapped around its finger. In PRAGMA (available online), I felt the soft, pure warmth of teen love, and also subtle markers of conflict – the teens falling in love are both girls, and one of them has a boy in pursuit, and also a prejudiced teacher. Pragma means either longstanding or pragmatic love, in Greek, the love of longterm partners. 170 BUCKS FOR A CAB, ONE RIDE, ONE NIGHT placed a young woman on the hunt for the truth about an evening “soaking in booze” that left her with a bruised temple.

MOSF 13.10: The Family Picture I'm Looking For

     When I was small, snuggled in bed with my mother, she would hold me and tell me stories. I had a favorite, one that she would tell again and again. “Tell me the story, tell me the story!” I would squeal, and she would start. Each time she told it, she had the same excitement, wonder and joy. That’s one of the ways I knew she loved me. We were together, and happy.

MOSF 13.11: Umami, Jimami Tofu and Aunt Lily’s Flowerbook

     We have to feed our minds with umami– the pleasant and savory – if we are truly to bring depth and deliciousness to our inner lives. What is umami to our minds? ... Friendship – and friendliness with one’s inner life – is that fifth taste (the FIFTH ELEMENT of love – to bring in that flick directed by Luc Besson and starring Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich) that allows the inner life to blossom into umami – a pleasant, savory, restful warmth towards others and oneself. Life tastes good. Life can be love. But it is complicated and deep.

Thanks for reading - and may you have happiness, health, well-being, safety and joy. May you have friendship and love.

Ravi