Today on a ONE Research Foundation Zoom seminar, a longtime teacher of mine, an elder statesman in the healing arts and founder of Neuroemotional Technique (NET) Dr Scott Walker helped about 53 holistic practitioners ranging from medical doctors to chiropractors, acupuncturists and psychotherapists to find a clearer understanding and context in today’s political and epidemiological environments.
As he explained it, history has taught us that the whole epic of mankind has been punctuated by war, disease, and all sorts of troubles from the beginning of time. And every single time these terrible things happened, there were casualties AND mankind as a race always overcame them. And we will overcome this current difficult period no doubt! In the meantime, we’re trying to keep ourselves out of overwhelm. And the election has made things even more stressful!
Regarding the seeminigly unscalable growing divide between peoples in this country, he explained it this way: Imaging you are in an ancient hamlet somewhere and there’s a famine. Some of the villagers will want to conserve the food supply and parse it out slowly while others will want to leave the village, step outside what is known and explore new areas for food.
The first group play the role of the conservatives and the latter the progressives. They all have the same goal – to survive collectively – just different ideas of how to go about it. It has been shown that these tendencies may even be genetically ingrained into each individual. Our genetics and nervous systems are basically biased at birth: conservatism, progressivism or independents with pull both directions.
See The Atlantic, October 24, 2013 Politics – by Avi Tuschman, “Can Your Genes Predict Whether You’ll Be a Conservative or a Liberal? Scientific research shows political partisanship transcends economics, environment, and upbringing.”
We all want the same thing for the tribe. We just have different ways to get there. We have to trust that we all want the same thing – a better world, survival. We need both kinds of people: those to take care of the norm and those to go out and to find new answers. We just need to work on the stress of the perception of the polarized political environment. We live in a world of duality – the polarity of the mind. We need to understand that this polarity exists within our own minds.
In today’s world, the media (either side) wants advertising dollars and our attention – and they show us the fringes, the extremes that scare us. It goes to our limbic systems and terrorizes us. We all are very vulnerable because life is not a guarantee, like a dewdrop on a blade of grass – it is fleeting and in the big picture it is also very unstable.
We share the same vulnerabilities with people on both ends of the political spectrum. Try this mindfulness practice: When you encounter somebody opposite / different to you, rather than digging in your heels, try if even for just a second to honor their vulnerability and to see how they choose to get out of it. Find the flawed, afraid vulnerability in yourself, and then in the other person and try to find that commonality with them – our inability to create an iron-clad safe harbor. I am really talking to the Limbic system – the deepest and most primitave part of your brain which is solely focused on our survival.
Throughout the millenia we as humans have been equipped to survive as a people. The problem is that we are all mortal and the Corona virus has come around to remind us (once again) of that. One thing is certain for all of us – death (and taxes)! As a practitioner my main purpose is to help people to not suffer and to be healthy. And one way that I do that is by listening (often between the lines) and with the help of certain scientifically-validated techniques including Neuroemotional Technique (NET. Again, see One Research Foundation).
But the truth is that each of us in our own way and our own time will someday die. I started out this year with a very personal reminder of this fact when in one evening on December 31, 2019 I lost both my father (aged 90 with end-stage Parkinsons & Alzheimers diseases) and my sister (11 months older than me, happy, athletic and healthy); two seemingly separate events, same exact time! One was expected, the other totally a surprise. That set the stage for me for this year.
So having lived through this, I ask myself what is my purpose? Even stars die! Worlds eventually die. Galaxies die. For Dr Walker it is to keep the Grim Reeper from reeping unhappiness and terror while we are still living. I love that! To help nudge everybody to be a bit more loving and positive, to make a little positive difference for each human life that I come into contact with each day. That is a worthy reason to keep on keepin’ on.
We’re all in this together as the collective human race. And we’re going to be ok and get through this political and pandemic turmoil. There will be some casualties – there always are – but we’ll get through this – together.