How do we heal the world?

I think most of you would agree that the world is pretty messed up right now. At every level. I don’t even know where to start. It’s got to the point where I can’t look at the news any more, I struggle to engage with social media. I find it all too painful.

Over the past 18 months or so, it’s felt like we’re on an ever more rapid pathway to total destruction. Everybody seems to be shouting about it. But nothing seems to change. In fact, it appears to be getting even worse. Some days…most days, I find it all too distressing to even think about. I used to think that I needed to be aware. To keep myself abreast with what was going on in the world. But I found that so overwhelming that I would often become paralysed with grief.

The Ostrich Effect

I know I’m not alone. For many of us, it’s easier to switch off, to bury our heads in the sand, stick our fingers in our ears and go ‘La, la, la’ really loudly. Pretend it’s not happening. Focus on our day-to-day lives, our routines, our work commitments, our ‘must-dos’ our ‘should-dos’ our ‘have-tos’ our ‘need-tos’.

Are those just lame excuses? No, I don’t think so. I think we live in a world where, for most of us, this is what we’ve come to believe life is all about. The busy-ness, the day-to-day, our work, our commitments, our kids’ school, homework etc etc. We get up, go to work, come home, do our household chores, go to bed…and repeat. We are so caught up in the day-to-day that we have little time to consider the bigger picture, the future, what lies ahead…what’s really important.

The impact of this inaction? We continue on the pathway to self-destruction.

Unintended consequences?

Don’t get me wrong: I know there are many, many people out there in the world, spending hours, days, weeks, months, years of their lives campaigning for change. Protesting, writing letters to their MPs, filing law suits, spreading the word, raising awareness, clamouring for change in whatever way they can. Some of them are putting their lives on the line to stand up for what they believe in.

And I salute you all. I respect each and every one of you for speaking out, for having the passion, the conviction the courage and the commitment to stand up, to be a force for change. It’s important work and I send you all love and grateful thanks for everything that you do.

But there’s something that’s been bugging me for a while now: whilst I believe we need people to stand up and fight, by focusing so much time and energy on them are we actually giving them even more power? 

Many people, myself included, believe in the power of manifestation; that our thoughts create our world; that whatever we place our attention on becomes our reality. This is not some airy-fairy-woo-woo theory. It’s the way it works.

From a neurological perspective, the subconscious mind doesn’t process negative thoughts, so by focusing on the ‘no’, the ‘stop this’ or the ‘don’t do that’, we are actually focusing on the thing we want to stop. And because we are thinking about those things we most hate, are most angry about, are most afraid of, we are fuelling it at a strong emotional and energetic level too.

And, at this time, when so many of us are angry, enraged, distressed at what we see happening in the world, are we inadvertently bringing about the very things we don’t want at an accelerated rate?

The power of love

I’m not suggesting we should stop saying, ‘no’, stop standing up for what we believe in, stop protecting those who are less able to do so themselves, such as our children. They need us now, even more than ever.

What I do think, though, is that we need to do so from a place of love and compassion, rather than from anger and fear. We need to summon up all the inner strength we can muster, stand tall and face all those who we stand against with love. This is not an easy thing to do. But I think it is essential if we are to bring about true, positive, lasting change in the world.

So, how do we do that? I don’t have all the answers but what I do believe is that we need to have a vision – of what we do want, of how the world would look if those people or things we are fighting against just disappeared.

And we must hold our vision strong, focus on it, in our thoughts, with our hearts, in our prayers, with every fibre of our being. And as we do so, we must really feel the emotions and envision it with all our senses.

Whether you believe in manifestation or not, I hope you might see the value in focusing on what you do want; in creating a vision, a dream for the future. And if we do this collectively, we put so much more power behind it.

For me, that is a world of love, compassion and peace, where all needs matter, where resources are distributed according to need, where all living things are valued and where we live in harmony with each other, ourselves and nature. And I know this is a vision shared by many of you too.

How this will actually look or work may be different for each and every one of us. That doesn’t matter – we may all have different dreams. We can still hold the shared vision together. For this to happen, we need to turn our anger, fear and judgement into compassion, love and acceptance. In so doing, we will naturally start to attract those to us who have similar dreams to ours…and that is the first crucial step to bringing it into reality. 

Shifting from jackal to giraffe

So, how do we gaze upon our ‘enemies’ with love and compassion? I’m not going to lie: it’s incredibly hard. We’ve been conditioned all of our lives to judge others, to compete, to criticise, to blame. (For more on this, see my blog: Divided we fall.)  And in this way, we separate, divide and often dehumanise those on the ‘other side’. This makes it easier to step into our ‘jackal’ behaviour: to hate, to belittle, to call people stupid, ignorant or selfish and, of course, this sort of behaviour fuels the anger, the hatred and the division in an ever-increasing spiral.

It’s a hard habit to break. But if we really want to bring about change we need to break it. So, where do we start? I think we need to start by understanding that we are all compassionate beings at heart; that behind everyone’s judging, blaming, hate-filled jackal behaviour there is a compassionate, loving, wonderful ‘giraffe’ just waiting to come out.

As Marshall Rosenberg (founder of the Centre for Nonviolent Communication) said:

“Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.”

If we understand that, it makes it so much easier to see things from other people’s perspectives. When we can see past the jackal words and behaviour to the unmet needs behind them, we get a glimpse of the other person’s essence, their fragile, vulnerable soul. And in so doing, we unlock our own tenderness. And when we do that, when we really allow ourselves to let go of the jackals and view the world through the eyes of the giraffe, something really beautiful happens. We open our hearts to love.