03-10-2021
Healing is a function of communication, whereas disease is a manifest breakdown in and of communication. The state of the health of a system, be it physical, psychic, or social/societal, is the entire network of communication as which the system exists being wholly functional and every part of the system being heard and touched.
Healing is a function of communication that touches the hearts of both the speaker and the listener. Such communication is an expression of compassion. To be compassionate means to simply allow other people to touch your heart in your listening so deeply and totally that you also touch their hearts.
Healing occurs through this compassionate mutual touching of your and their hearts.
Generations after generations, humanity has suffered from and been traumatized by physical and psychical violence—which is a destructive disruption in and of communication. In war parties and peoples cease to communicate and instead appeal to violence and destruction.
The first half of the 20th century was especially severe in this regard with the two world wars, combined with the great depression and the influenza epidemic, because of which hundreds of millions of people had perished or been damaged. And the chain reactions of violence and war have continued throughout the 20th century until today, engulfing the whole planet.
Humanity has not recovered from that humongous (huge and monstrous) trauma. It is not too far from truth to state that a significant percentage of the human population suffers from a collective post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And people who suffer from PTSD tend to exhibit a host of psychological and behavioral dysfunctional symptoms that used to be associated with neurosis or even psychosis.
In many cases, even when those with PTSD are treated by other people with nothing but good will, kindness, and generosity, they still react with ill will, attacking and retaliating for reasons that are delusionary or illusionary. Their reaction is totally irrational and has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual person or the actual situation, and yet they become triggered and react.
On the unconscious level they become triggered by and react to the misperceived reactivation or reenactment of the past traumas. Their reaction is the personification or the individualization of the generational karmic repetitions of the collective trauma. Thus physical and psychic violence karmically continues. There are wars within and without being waged in all scales at all times.
Today we come across so many people involved in the work of improving or transforming the world who have nevertheless never resolved or healed their own psychological issues related to their past traumas. Those unresolved issues and unhealed traumas cast dark shadows over not only their own personal lives but also over the work in which they are involved.
The world needs healing but those who are internally unhealed cannot possibly heal the world. There are people engaged in various forms of social activism precisely in order to evade the responsibility of self-healing and to avoid the necessary work of facing and resolving their own wounds. They project their own inner turmoil out onto the world, conjure up the guilty targets to blame (e. g. capitalism, inequality, racism, etc.) and then find righteous causes in which to get lost.
There exist too many “change agents” (or “do-gooders”) who carry within their inner psyche an unresolved conflict and untamed violence, which nullifies the possibility of real change and the potential for being an authentic agency. Therefore, be aware of the pattern of imposing yourself to be an agent of change without first healing yourself.
This is what is meant by the statement “Be the change you want to make.”
As healing is a function of communication that touches the hearts of both the speakers and the listeners, so let us start communicating with one another in such a manner that we can touch and be touched.
As healing is a function of communication as an expression of compassion, so let us cultivate compassion toward all of humanity and sentient beings, including and starting with our own self.
Healing begins with self-healing—through self-communication, through self-touch, and therefore through self-compassion—by being open to touch and be touched by self and others.
Heal thine own self. Then heal thine own world.