Mindfulness is the awareness of one’s internal states and surroundings. It’s focusing on being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment.

I always try to live with the concept of mindfulness. I prefer living in the moment. I will plan for the future, but I do not worry about it. Worrying about what will happen in the future only diminishes the now.

As for the past? I will always remember what has been, but I do not live there. Each time we bring up the past we bring life to it. Sometimes this is wonderful as we visit people and times that are no longer here. The darkness of our past needs to be remembered to ensure it never happens again.

Trying to erase the past with great ostentatious ballyhoo, believing it is going to change what is here right now, does nothing for what is here right now.

American billionaire Robert Kraft, CEO of the Kraft Group and owner of the New England Patriots, sent a letter to the Albany County Commissioners, requesting their support in changing the name of Swastika Lake, in the Snowy Mountain Range.

The swastika is now the symbol used by white supremacist groups to glorify the Nazis and show their hatred of all nonwhite communities. Kraft believes the name glorifies the Nazis and their treatment of the Jewish community.

On June 20, 2023, by a 2 to 1 vote, Albany County commissioners recommended Swastika Lake be renamed Knight Lake. Despite multiple proposals to rename Swastika Lake, Albany County Commissioner Terri Jones, with the nay vote, argues that the controversially named Swastika Lake should keep its name.

“Why would we remove the teaching opportunity to explain the history of the swastika, both good and bad? The bad was very bad. However, the good predated the bad by eons and the good is truly good and represents hope and goodwill.”

The swastika is an ancient religious and cultural symbol. The word “swastika” has Sanskrit roots and means “the mark of wellbeing.” It has been used in prayers in the oldest of Hindu scriptures. In Buddhism, the symbol is known as “manji” and signifies the Buddha’s footsteps.

The Ancient Greeks used the swastika to decorate their pots and vases. The ancient Druids and Celts used the sign, and in Norse mythology, the swastika represented Thor’s hammer.

With the appropriation of the swastika by the Nazi Party of World War II and the Holocaust, the swastika is strongly associated with Nazism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy. It has become a symbol of evil. The law prohibits the use and display of the swastika in some countries, including Germany.

The Nazi regime during World War II, was led by Adolph Hitler, who was anti-social, had traits of paranoia, was sadistic, had narcissistic personality disorders and had a sexual fetish of being defecated on. There is no doubt this man was nothing but sick and evil. 

Now let’s introduce the offspring of Hitler’s narcissistic personality disorders and fetishes, the white supremacist. The people who are looking at Hitler as the higher power trusted that white people constitute a superior race. They believe that they should dominate society to the exclusion and elimination of other racial and ethnic groups. Within this group, let’s also heavily spread all of Hitler’s personality disorders and also include narrow-minded stupidity and ignorance.

If the swastika has lost the meaning of its origin and is now nothing more than a symbol of white supremacy, why is a cross, the principal symbol of the Christian religion, so widely accepted?

Millions and millions of indigenous people were raped, murdered and enslaved while being forcibly converted to Christianity. Violence and murder, both past and present of Christianity, have been widespread.

Given that the central message of religion is peace and love, how is it then that the faithful can be incited to acts of violence?

Catholics and Protestants have been murdering each other since Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Pope in 1517, and the killing has continued into recent history in Northern Ireland. I witnessed this in the 1990s while on assignment there.

Christianity in the United States often takes on a particularly militant tone. There are fundamentalist Christians who sanction violent acts against “sinners,” such as the bombing of Planned Parenthood clinics or assassinating the doctors who perform abortions, as they freely call themselves “Soldiers of Christ.”

Renaming a lake, or changing any name for that matter, to make it more soothing, or pushing over a statue of some Confederate general, does nothing but scratch the scab from an old wound. What is needed is forward-thinking of stopping the notoriety that happened, from ever happening again.

All that is done now is a dialogue of nonsensical rationalism on social media and meetings about what should be done. We are only placing a Band-Aid on issues that never get healed. We, as a nation, have lost responsibility for our actions. The punishment no longer matches the crime.

I’m not saying that the white supremacist use of a swastika should be freely waved in our faces, as it should not. I’m not saying that the cross should be torn down, as it should not. What I am saying is that trying to change the past, while we shun any and all signs of it, doesn’t do anything about fixing what is happening right now, in this moment. - dbA

You can find more of the unfiltered insight and the Art of Dan Abernathy at www.contributechaos.com. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, The Intrepid Explorer!