Healing Society by Healing Ourselves // Playing Kickball with Community

It seems that fear really, really wants to release itself from me. It's working its way out of me through lower back pain (storage space for emotional trauma), manifesting in my dreams, and building stories in my mind that create uncomfortable visceral responses in my belly (the story-building thing is familiar; I'll get to that later). For most of my life, I've lived in a state of fear. I've compared myself to other people and quite often felt less something than someone else -- less than the best, due of course in part to the energy of competitiveness and the value placed on physicality in our society -- so whether it was less beautiful, less able to be of help or competent in some way, less good at a sport or a subject in school, there had been (and still sometimes is) always a constant voice expressing to me the need to be something other than I am. This voice has shown up from so many different sources, and at some point, it eventually became my own. I equate the volume and ferocity of that inner voice with the sort of deafening, nonstop static that penetrates the space during a professional football game: it's very OUR society, and it's VERY loud. Those Western ideals can get'cha, and they got me -- for real.

Rejection -- in all its forms -- whether it be having the "wrong" [ha, duality] answer in class, experiencing unrequited might-have-been love, or not making some team (or being one of the best on the team), often felt unbearably crushing to me ... though I would often numb those feelings through various means of distraction. I mean, how often do we tell people we're okay when we're really not? What is it with mainstream society's aversion to vulnerability? Show us how you really feel, society. Oh, you do: it's very clear, and manifests in the way psychotherapy is largely viewed and treated and responded to in this culture: there's major stigma there, and it keeps us from finding holistic health and exploring what could be our higher truth because we're subtly (and often not-so-subtly) shown that if we put action toward healing ourselves, there's something wrong with us; it shows us that vulnerability equates with weakness. So instead, we succumb to the bombardment of the messages we receive all around us; we numb our "symptoms" of confusion or unhappiness and we disregard our emotionally void low-serotonin-level-having brain chemistry with the vices of Western culture: extreme boozing; immersing ourselves in watching mindless reality TV shows; chasing money and things always right outside of ourselves, and a thousand more etceteras. We immerse ourselves in anything that will keep us away from where we are -- shutting out the cognizance that where we are is really the only place we'll ever find true answers, after all.


The strategies I sought out to assert myself, to prove my self-validity through other means, have been in multitude. One of those ways was to instill in those who were, next to me, less powerful, know [my projection of] this hierarchy. I have been merciless at times, all in service of boosting my own feelings of worth. (Take a wild guess if it worked!) Additionally, I tend to make things all about me. I have pretty powerful energy and wherever I am on the emotional spectrum, the people around me feel it. I feel it on the most cutting, deep level, of course, but the depth to which I'm choosing to go to engage this recognition has often varied. I've also often been unaware of the ways in which I fling my energy. The power-tripped-out narcissism (classic trait of the insecure) has had its part in my habits of creating dramas (either within my head, often reacting to these stories as if they're real, and then unintentionally actually creating a drama in real-time simply because I become activated by -- and then react to -- the one that feels real in my mind, OR creating a drama around me, old-school middle school style: both sorts of drama often reflected reflect my true inner state. These days, I do less of the social drama thing, but the internal story-telling drama; OH, girl! That is a neural pathway that runs deep.) I've recognized that creating these dramas is somewhat of a defense mechanism; it's kept me from being present -- present to whatever is happening in the moment.When symptoms of OCD, anxiety, and depression were triggered for me in middle school, my parents sent me to a Psychotherapist where I got the official diagnosis. I was seen by a few different therapists over the course of a few years; if I had been shown perhaps earlier by a society more appreciative of authenticity, of play (and I don't mean in the form of aggressive competition), of true community, that this process was okay, perhaps I wouldn't have tried to self-medicate and run from the process so much. Of course there's no point in the "what could have been"-type thinking, but I'll offer this here:

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions.
When did you stop dancing?
When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?
Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced the loss of soul.

Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.

~ The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Healer, Teacher and Visionary

What our society is doing on a massive scale -- to its people and to Earth [see previous posts for my personal POV :)] -- isn't working anymore, and it's time to start healing it; we've entered a new paradigm and it's time to start nourishing the ground here for the healthy planting of new ideas. I know, because I have been a product of society ... and this fear doesn't work for me anymore. I need to plant new ideas, forge my own way through my mind for the continued forming of new neural pathways, and fill these channels with the seeds of hope, not doubt. Macro-scale anything begins with micro-scale anything, and in the case here, this goes for healing.

I am cognizant of having used the word "society" in this post many times thus far: To get clearer, society, of course, is begun by (a collection of) individuals. And the only reason man-made systems really go awry and corporations go corrupt and societies try to possess and control their citizens in the ways that they do is because of a group-mentality that feeds on power (this often shows up in the West, of course, in the form of an influx of money that hooks people and keeps them, like mentioned above, on that perpetual paper chase outside of themselves) and then builds on itself in order to acquire more of it, keeping it all for itself since it's had a taste of it and it's SO DELICIOUS (but not in the way that delicious is really supposed to be).

Community is something else. I picture Society as that rich, spoiled, mean kid at recess who purposely pummels the kickball right in the face of Community and then laughs about it. Community is poor and maybe not so athletic, and might not pose much of a threat to Society. Community might be brutally stunned for a second; Community might even cry, might kick that ball to the other end of the playground; Community might even run away. But Community might also hold Society in compassion and take a look at the kickball and, rather than doing anything with it, just walk away. Or, Community may even softly boot the kickball back to Society just so that asshole can, again and again, keep flinging kickballs in other kids' faces until he realizes he has no friends anymore and there's no choice but to head home alone. (Maybe he'll find meditation there.)

One answer to healing society is building up Community. Community puts the needs of the group before the needs of the individual; community supports and offers presence; community attends potlucks; community listens, holding you in full embrace when needed; community provides and holds space for the cycle of giving and receiving. Community creates. Community is compassionate enough to let society in.

***

Every time we have a thought, the brain produces chemicals that signal the body for us to begin to feel exactly the way we are just thinking. In that way, if we are thinking an unhappy thought or negative thought, in a matter of seconds we begin to feel unhappy or negative or unworthy.

At the moment we begin to feel the way we think, we begin to think the way we feel, which then makes more chemicals for us to feel the way we think and think the way we feel, and this cycle of feeling and thinking and thinking and feeling creates what is called the “state of being”.

-- Dr. Joe Dispenza (Neuro-Scientist)