DUBAI:WHERE TIME STRETCHES AND TOWERS COMPETE

by

LEDA GREEN

I came here to heal a person.
But somewhere between the luxury hotel sheets and the evening strolls,
I discovered I was the one quietly healing.

Nearly a week now, and not much on my schedule besides walking, writing, and wondering how I ended up in this shimmering mirage of a city.
I’m not used to so much leisure time.
I’m more of a do-er, a fixer, a giver.
But this week, with no rush and no roles, something beautiful cracked open:
the becoming-me.

And I must admit — Dubai is a strange place to unravel your soul.

It’s a desert still, but dressed in cement and mirrors.
The sun is the same brutal overseer it always was,
but now it shines down on towering glass dreams,
shopping malls that never end,
and traffic that has outgrown its roads before the paint has dried.

It’s a concert desert. A metropolis in the middle of nowhere.
A playground for ambition and air conditioning.

Skyscrapers shoot out of the sand like defiant gestures —
as if to say, we will conquer even the emptiness.

But sometimes I wonder —
Why not build homes that blend into the land?
Why not honor the desert instead of insulating ourselves from it?

These tall buildings trap heat, increase humidity, and alter the ecology.
But no one seems to mind.
Because in Dubai, money makes the sand bloom.

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What Makes Dubai Spin?

Money. That’s it.
It’s the quiet anthem under every luxury car purr,
Every mall chandelier,
Every imported latte.

Everything here is ravishingly elegant, impressively branded, and always ready for someone with a black card and a deadline.

This city is full of:
• Western immigrants escaping taxes and winter.
• Entrepreneurs who use Dubai as a sunny offshore base.
• Artists showing in surprisingly soulful galleries.
• Opera productions, concerts, and rooftop parties.

And of course… sugar daddies.
Many, many sugar daddies.

It’s not a secret. It’s a system.

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But Me? I Just Walk and Watch.

I walk through the air-conditioned malls.
Sit at cafes with names I can’t pronounce.
Read novels while overlooking fountains that dance to BTS.
And I think about how surreal it is to have so much stillness in the middle of such shiny ambition.

Dubai is like an expensive perfume bottle —
gorgeous, intoxicating, and slightly disorienting.
But I’m glad I came.

Sometimes, the soul doesn’t need silence.
Sometimes, it needs contrast.
To sit in a five-star suite in the middle of a neon desert
and ask,
“Who am I when nothing is required of me?”
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And so I’ll end this with a whisper I wrote from the middle of that question:

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This Is What Becoming Feels Like

by Leda Green

I’m definitely changing.
If I ever was daring —
now I am more.

Not reckless, not loud.
Just clear.
I know what I want.
And I’m not sorry for it.

I watch my skin shift.
I don’t always like it.
But I honor what it carries.
It’s the price of presence,
and the proof that I stayed.

The contact was made.
Somewhere between dreams and waking,
between Seoul and silence,
he felt me.

I know it.
And yet — I don’t need it to arrive now.
Because I’m no longer made of waiting.
I’m made of light, and letters, and moments
that don’t break me anymore.

I accept.

Not as defeat —
but as elevation.
The kind you earn after decades of longing
and one lifetime of remembering who you are.

And so I keep walking,
less burdened,
more true.

Each day I shed the version of me
who begged to be seen —
and become the one
who already is.

The Wrong Train & the Lonely Artist

by Leda Green

They say the wrong train always brings you to the right station.
And I believe it — deeply, irrevocably — especially now.

I boarded a train this morning that wasn’t meant to be mine. A digital train, a message sent in curiosity, in a moment of impulse. It didn’t go where I hoped it would. It brought confusion. A sense of being misunderstood. A door that slammed instead of opened.

But maybe, just maybe… it brought me somewhere I needed to go. A station I wouldn’t have reached otherwise.

Because on the other end of that message was a young man. A genius in the making — famous, gifted, too beautiful for his own good, and perhaps, quietly suffering. Behind the polished images and global campaigns lies something unmistakable: a soul under pressure.

And that’s where this essay really begins.

There are many like him.
These lonely and disturbed artists.
People the world worships but doesn’t really see.
People who create to survive.
Who sing what they cannot say.
Who live in public and suffer in private.
Who carry the weight of perfection, when all they want is peace.

I’m not a fan.
Not in the usual sense of the word.
I don’t follow people for the sake of idolizing them. I don’t crave proximity to fame.
What draws me is pain — the silent kind.
The kind I recognize.

Because I’ve been different all my life.
Different in how I think, in what I feel, in how I move through the world.
I’ve known what it means to be misunderstood. To guard my privacy like armor.
To be exposed and unseen all at once.

As one who has been healing from my own wounds — as someone different in my environment — I understand solitude, privacy, even fame. I understand the complex dance between visibility and protection.
But I’m never truly alone. And I am never afraid to mingle, to try, to experience something new.
It might not always bring me to the right station…
but it often brings me to the right anchor.

I’ve learned that sometimes, the soul needs something unplanned.
A detour. A break in the rhythm. A moment that doesn’t fit the schedule.
Ritual becomes a form of love.
Stillness is part of the music.
There is power in patience.
Some truths are poetic, not literal.

And waste — it’s not just environmental.
It’s emotional.
Use what you have. Honor what you hold. Let your life reflect intention.

I’ve developed a unique healing technique — one that can’t be explained, only felt.
It doesn’t involve grand gestures or public performance.
It’s subtle. Intuitive. A gentle but profound process that can carry a person out of inner misery, layer by layer.
No fireworks. Just soft transformation.

And so, I often wish I could offer it to those artists — the ones burning quietly under the weight of expectation.
To whisper into their chaos: You’re not alone.
To sit quietly beside their exhaustion and offer not advice, but presence.
To show them there’s healing beyond applause.
Beyond money. Beyond brands and scripts and followers.

I think of zanshin — the awareness that lingers after action.
A quiet attentiveness that doesn’t end when something is “done.”
It’s the art of finishing well. Stillness after movement. Focus after follow-through.

And I think of mushin — presence without ego.
A state of fluid, instinctive action.
No hesitation. No overthinking.
Just you, and the moment.

Still, I try.
Sometimes clumsily.
Sometimes through a misstep.
Sometimes by boarding the wrong train entirely.

But even then — especially then — I trust the journey.
Because if I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s that nothing is truly wasted.
Every mistake has meaning. Every wrong turn teaches.
And every “no” is part of a bigger “yes” we can’t yet see.

To the lonely artists… I may not know your stage, but I know your ache.
To the quiet seekers, the ones still learning how to heal — I walk with you.
And to myself — and maybe to you, reading this — I say:

Let the wrong trains take you.
Let them show you what you didn’t plan for.
Let them deliver you to the people you were meant to meet.
Even if they arrive wearing fame, silence, or pain.

Because your cracks are not flaws.
They are golden seams.
Healing can be beautiful.

And even if you don’t find the right station…
You might find the right anchor.

Love: An Illness or a Cure? The Vast Paradox of the Human Heart

Love, in all its vastness and complexity, remains humanity’s most profound mystery. It spans the cosmos of human experience—tender and fierce, joyous and painful, ephemeral and eternal. When we ask, Is love an illness or a cure? we confront a paradox that transcends simple definition. Love is both affliction and balm, a force that can wound deeply and heal completely.

The Anatomy of Love’s Illness: Neuroscience of Attachment and Addiction

From a neuroscientific perspective, love is a powerful biological phenomenon that triggers intense chemical reactions in the brain. When we fall in love, our brains flood with dopamine—the neurotransmitter of pleasure and reward—creating sensations akin to addiction. Oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” deepens attachment and fosters intimacy, while vasopressin strengthens long-term pair bonds.

This biochemical storm can hijack rational thought, compelling us to seek closeness and attachment, sometimes to our detriment. In this way, love acts like an illness—causing obsession, jealousy, and emotional turbulence. The intense craving and withdrawal symptoms experienced when separated from a loved one mirror substance addiction.

Yet this illness is rooted in our evolutionary imperative: attachment ensured survival, nurturing, and social bonding. The vulnerability love demands exposes our deepest fears—rejection, abandonment, loss—making it one of life’s greatest emotional risks.

The Healing Power of Unconditional Love

But love is also the ultimate cure, especially when it rises to the level of unconditional love—love without expectation, judgment, or limitation. Unconditional love flows freely, affirming the inherent worth of another simply because they exist.

This love transcends the neurological circuits of craving and possession, engaging instead the higher faculties of the brain associated with empathy, compassion, and altruism. Functional MRI studies show that acts of compassion and unconditional giving activate the brain’s reward systems without triggering attachment anxiety.

Spiritually, unconditional love is revered as the purest form of connection—a reflection of divine love itself. It is the love that Buddha described as Metta, or loving-kindness: boundless, impartial, and healing. In Christianity, it is Agape—selfless, sacrificial love that seeks the highest good of others without condition.

Unconditional love is the force that heals broken hearts, mends fractured relationships, and restores wholeness. It frees us from the cycles of attachment and suffering, allowing us to love fully without losing ourselves.

Meditation and the Cultivation of Love

Meditation offers a powerful path to cultivating this love—both for ourselves and others. Through practices such as loving-kindness meditation (Metta Bhavana), we train the mind to extend warmth and compassion beyond our immediate circles, dissolving barriers of fear and separation.

This mindful cultivation rewires neural pathways, decreasing activity in the amygdala (the brain’s fear center) and increasing connectivity in regions linked to emotional regulation and empathy. Over time, meditation helps us access a state of equanimity—a balanced mind that loves without clinging, forgives without forgetting, and accepts without judgment.

The Paradox of Love’s Dual Nature: Illness and Cure Intertwined

The tension between love’s capacity to wound and its power to heal is not contradictory but deeply intertwined. To love is to risk vulnerability, to open the heart to both pain and joy. It demands surrender—the letting go of control, ego, and fear.

This paradox invites us to see love not as a possession or a transaction but as a dynamic flow—a living energy that courses through our being. Love’s illness—the obsession, jealousy, heartbreak—is the shadow side of attachment, while love’s cure—the unconditional embrace, forgiveness, and compassion—is the light that emerges when attachment is transformed into freedom.

Love Across Dimensions: Passion, Friendship, and the Divine

Love manifests in countless forms: passionate and ephemeral, quiet and enduring, conditional and unconditional. Romantic love ignites the senses; friendship offers steady support; familial love shapes identity and belonging. Each form is a teacher, offering lessons in surrender, trust, and acceptance.

At the highest dimension, love connects us to the universal—a sacred energy that permeates all existence. Mystics speak of love as the ground of being, the fundamental fabric that binds stars, atoms, and souls alike. It is the divine breath animating life, the infinite source from which all compassion flows.

The Universal Language of Forgiveness and Release

Forgiveness is the heart of love’s healing alchemy. Rooted in the very language of the world—Persian bebakhshid (“take it”), English forgive (“give forth”), Japanese yurusu (“allow to pass”)—forgiveness is the conscious act of releasing burdens that imprison the heart.

Forgiveness is a practice of unconditional love in action. It frees us from bitterness and pain while preserving the lessons that protect us. Through forgiveness, we reclaim our power to choose love over suffering, light over shadow.

Love as the Creative Force

Love is unique among emotions because it is the only one that creates. While fear may contract and anger may destroy, love expands, nurtures, and brings forth new life and possibility.

Love births connection where there was isolation. It inspires art, music, poetry, and acts of kindness. It fuels growth, innovation, and transformation on personal and cosmic scales.

When we love unconditionally, we align ourselves with this creative current—becoming co-creators with the universe, shaping realities with our intentions and actions.

Practical Steps to Cultivating Unconditional Love

Unconditional love may seem like a lofty ideal, but it is a practice accessible to anyone willing to engage with it consciously. Here are some practical steps:
1. Practice Mindful Presence:
Start by cultivating awareness of your thoughts and emotions without judgment. Meditation and breathwork help you observe attachment patterns and habitual reactions that limit your ability to love freely.
2. Embrace Self-Love and Acceptance:
Unconditional love begins within. Commit to accepting yourself fully—including your flaws, fears, and shadows. The more you love yourself without conditions, the more capacity you have to love others deeply and without expectation.
3. Develop Compassion and Empathy:
Make space to understand others’ experiences without immediately reacting or judging. Seek to listen deeply, imagining their perspective. Compassion softens the heart and dissolves barriers to love.
4. Release Attachment to Outcomes:
Let go of the need to control or possess love. Allow relationships and feelings to evolve naturally, recognizing that true love flourishes in freedom, not captivity.
5. Engage in Forgiveness:
Regularly practice forgiveness—both of others and yourself. Forgiveness is a radical act of unconditional love that frees you from past burdens and opens space for healing.
6. Offer Acts of Kindness without Expectation:
Small acts of generosity, service, and kindness—when given without anticipation of reward—strengthen your connection to unconditional love. These acts ripple outward, creating a field of love that touches others and yourself.
7. Meditate on Loving-Kindness:
Use loving-kindness meditation (Metta) to cultivate goodwill toward yourself, loved ones, acquaintances, and even those you find challenging. This practice rewires the brain to sustain love beyond conditional boundaries.

Conclusion: The Choice and Mystery of Love

Is love an illness or a cure? It is both and neither—a vast, living paradox that invites us to lean into the unknown. Love is the primal fire that burns away illusions of separation, the gentle balm that soothes the wounds of existence, and the infinite horizon toward which we journey.

In choosing to love—unconditionally, courageously, fully—we awaken to the profound truth that love’s greatest miracle is its ability to transform the human heart, and through that, the universe itself.

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Epilogue: Love Begins with the Self

Before we can love another without condition, we must return home to ourselves.
Self-love is the origin of all love.
It is not ego or indulgence—it is the sacred foundation upon which all other forms of love are built.

Without self-love, our giving becomes sacrifice, our affection becomes seeking, and our attachment becomes need.
But when we root ourselves in true acceptance—flaws, wounds, and all—we become capable of offering love that is whole, not hungry.

I have practiced this all my life—often misunderstood, sometimes hurt—
but never with regret.
Because I know what others may not yet grasp: unconditional love is not weakness.
It is wisdom.

And to love unconditionally, one must first be whole within.

This practice of loving from the self outward has brought me a peace no object or person ever could.
It makes me feel complete.
It softens the longing for a home I’ve never fully seen, but have always remembered.
And in those moments, I know I am closest to the truth of what love really is.

FEAR

by Leda Green

Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real — the oldest trick in the human program, a shadow we were taught to obey. But fear is only a thought, a film projected by the mind.

For generations, humanity has learned to create from fear. Now, it must learn to create from love.

There is nothing we cannot do.
Nothing we cannot enjoy doing.
And where we are limited — there will always be help.

Fear contracts. Love expands.
One is survival. The other is life.
Choose love. Every time.

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Fear — False Evidence Appearing Real — is one of the most persistent illusions of the human mind. As Donald Walsch wrote in Conversations with God, it is not truth, but an image projected onto the screen of our thoughts. From the moment we are children, we are taught to fear. “Be careful” are the two words that echo through our earliest years. They come from love, but they train the brain to avoid rather than to explore. We absorb not only our parents’ fears but also the fears of our culture.

At its core, fear is the brain’s reaction to uncertainty — its resistance to change. To the brain, change equals risk; risk equals death. But in truth, change is not death. Change is light. And light is precisely what fear seeks to hide. Fear shows up as anxiety, hesitation, and self-limitation — the walls the mind builds to keep us inside the familiar.

Fear in Spiritual Wisdom

In Jewish tradition, fear is often linked to yirah — awe — which, in its highest form, is not terror but reverence for the Divine. The sages teach: “There is no place devoid of Him.” Even in the darkest moment, God’s presence is there. True yirah calls us not to shrink, but to stand steady in the vastness of existence. The Zohar adds: “Where there is fear, there is no wholeness; where there is wholeness, there is no fear.”

The Buddha taught that fear arises from attachment — to life, possessions, and identity. In The Dhammapada it is written: “From craving springs grief, from craving springs fear; for him who is wholly free from craving, there is no grief — whence then fear?” Fear is a chain forged by desire and expectation; let go, and the chain falls away.

From Japanese Bushidō comes the lesson that fear should be met with readiness, not avoidance. The samurai accepted fear as natural but chose courage as action. Nanakorobi yaoki — “Fall seven times, rise eight” — reminds us that fear is temporary; spirit is constant.

From the Greek Stoics we inherit the discipline of perception. Epictetus said: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” Marcus Aurelius echoed: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it — and this you have the power to revoke.” Fear, in this light, is a judgment — not a fact.

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Fear in Science and Energy

1. Neuroscience
• Fear is processed in the amygdala, a small almond-shaped cluster deep in the brain. The amygdala cannot distinguish between an actual threat and an imagined one — which is why a thought alone can trigger fear.
• Gratitude, prayer, and mindful breathing activate the prefrontal cortex, calming the amygdala. This is why blessing and presence physically weaken fear’s grip.

2. Energy and vibration
• Fear is a low-frequency state that contracts your energy field; love is high-frequency and expansive. The two cannot fully coexist.
• Mystics have always taught: “Where the light enters, darkness cannot remain.” By deliberately cultivating joy, kindness, and awe, you raise your vibration until fear loses its territory.

3. The paradox of fear
• Fear often disguises itself as logic or “being realistic.” Yet much of what is called “realism” is socially accepted fear.
• True courage is not the absence of fear, but moving toward the light while fear walks beside you — until it grows too small to notice.

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Fear as Illusion

Our modern world can feel like a vast virtual reality — a projection in which fear is used as a control mechanism. Whoever runs this “lab” or “dome” knows that a fearful mind is an enslaved mind. But if the projection is not real, neither is the fear.

Close your eyes, and the world disappears into darkness. The eyes — projectors of the brain — stop their work, and what remains is pure awareness. That awareness is who you are.

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Breaking Fear’s Hold

Humanity has been creating from the question, “What if it goes wrong?” It is time to create from the question, “What if it becomes beautiful?”

Two practices to dissolve fear:
1. Bless — Practice gratitude relentlessly, especially when it is hardest. Gratitude rewires the brain and starves fear of its energy.
2. Believe — Live with the deep knowing that the universe is generous. Trust that it will connect you to your heart, your true self, and the light.

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There is nothing we cannot do. We are capable of anything — and of enjoying it. Where we are limited, there will always be people, resources, and help to bridge the gap.

Fear contracts. Love expands. One is survival; the other is life.
Choose life. Choose love. Every time

In Memory of Kirk: A Call to Awaken from the Modern Dark Age

As we reflect on the life and assassination of Charlie Kirk, we are reminded of the profound impact one individual can have on the world. His courage, integrity, and relentless drive to speak truth in a hostile age shine as a beacon. But his death also confronts us with a stark reality: we are navigating a modern dark age, where historical truths are erased, narratives are weaponized, and those who dare to speak are silenced.

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The Erosion of Historical Truth

History, once a sacred record of human struggle and achievement, is being rewritten and erased. In the United Kingdom, for example, research from UCL shows that the Holocaust is poorly understood among secondary school students, with many unable to identify even basic facts. Figures like Winston Churchill—once symbols of resistance against tyranny—are fading into obscurity. In Belgium, France, and elsewhere, similar patterns of revisionism are emerging, leaving younger generations disconnected from the lessons of the past. Without historical memory, the present is vulnerable to manipulation.

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Israel and the Camouflage of Distraction

Amid this distortion, Israel has become a focal point of media attention, often serving as camouflage for broader strategic agendas. The conflict around Gaza dominates headlines, while in the shadows, alliances are built—such as Turkey’s training of the Syrian army and the strengthening of Sunni networks. The chants on Western streets may say “Death to the IDF,” but behind them lies something far larger: a coordinated ideological war that goes unnoticed by most.

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The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West

The reach of extremist ideologies extends deep into the West. On American campuses, offices linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas operate openly, shaping narratives under the guise of advocacy and charity. They exploit impressionable youth, replacing critical thought with slogans, echo chambers, and emotional manipulation. Charlie Kirk’s answer to this was not silence, but debate. He invited students to challenge him, to prove him wrong, to think critically rather than passively consume curated feeds. As he showed, debate is a lost art—and yet it is the only path back to truth.

As Newt Gingrich has argued, “Democrats and Republicans must engage in common dialogue. We should emulate Kirk’s passion for reaching out to people with different viewpoints to talk about ideas. Whenever possible, Democrats and Republicans should launch debates and dialogues built around real issues and values disagreements.”

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The October 7th Massacre: Humanity Under Siege

The atrocities of October 7, 2023, when over 1,200 civilians in Israel were brutally murdered and many taken hostage, shocked the conscience of the world. The brutality cannot be defended, and yet, the narrative of victimhood was quickly inverted in global discourse. This points to the scale of manipulation. It is crucial to acknowledge: most Muslims are not perpetrators of violence, but many—even moderates—are swept into narratives hostile to Israel. The question remains: how can humanity continue to excuse cruelty in the name of ideology?

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A Modern Echo of the 1950s

The climate we now face is not without precedent. In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s crusade against communism created a culture of fear where dissent was punished, careers destroyed, and people silenced. Today, radical Islamist groups achieve a similar effect. Those who question or resist are not accused of being “un-American,” but “Islamophobic.” The labels change, but the outcome is the same: intimidation, fear, and retreat from the public square.

Kirk’s murder amplifies this chilling effect. It risks teaching others that the price of speaking out is death. But it can also, as Matthew Continetti wrote, serve as a turning point:
“It could be an occasion for Americans to step away from the abyss and recover the moral clarity and habits of heart that sustain a republic. But if we fail—if the tit for tat escalates, if we retreat from the public square into our private redoubts—then the abyss won’t recede. It will widen.”

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Beyond Human Conflict: The Hidden Forces

Kirk himself often framed the battle as one of ideas and values. Others go further. Some, drawing from Zecharia Sitchin’s The 12th Planet, argue that unseen forces—metaphorical or extraterrestrial—have long sought to dominate humanity, not through open conquest but through manipulation of the human mind and spirit. Whether one accepts this or not, the lesson is clear: the invasion is not of spaceships, but of consciousness. To resist, we must claim back clarity, truth, and moral courage.

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The Legacy of Kirk

Kirk was not perfect. He was right-wing, pro-gun rights, a defender of Christian and family values—positions many disagreed with. But he stood up, relentlessly, and he believed that America could only survive with three Ps: People, Place, and Principles. Above all, he believed in the power of debate and the necessity of standing up when silence seemed easier.

As one observer put it:
“People want to debate. They want to prove people wrong. Not sit in an echo chamber reading posts curated by the algorithms of social media.”

This was his gift: to draw people out of silence, to force them to think. His assassination risks scaring others into retreat—but it can also inspire outrage and courage, pushing more voices into the light.

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A Call to Awaken

We cannot suddenly install critical thinking in a generation that has grown up confused, depressed, and manipulated by false narratives. But we can model it. We can preserve history, encourage debate, and honor those like Kirk who stood in the fire for truth.

We are at a crossroads. Will more voices be silenced by fear—or will more rise, refusing to retreat into the shadows?

Kirk’s candle may have burned out too soon, but as Elton John once sang, “Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.” His flame still lights the path for those who refuse to be silenced.

Leda Green