The primary focus in green programs is on correcting the physical contributors to global heating (warming is now an unacceptable euphemism!), pollution and squandering of resources. The prevalent planning addresses better resource management and reducing carbon outputs. The human factors that lie behind these problems are often not addressed directly. This is like dealing with road safety by focusing only on the mechanics of automobile design, highway construction and driving regulations, while ignoring ‘the nut behind the wheel’ and failing to invest in driver training and safety awareness. And time is running out.
It is extremely difficult to raise public awareness of the personal habits that contribute to global heating, much less to educate people in the practical steps required for bringing about the necessary changes. Lengthening the short-sighted events horizons and self-interested planning of elected officials, governmental agencies and industries is yet another level of challenge that may take years to shift towards responsible stewardship of our planet.
We don’t know how many months remain before we reach a tipping point beyond which no changes will save us from irreversible global heating. There is a serious likelihood that current programs will not be sufficient to halt our march towards extinction of humanity and of most other living organisms on this planet. This is not to say that current programs should be abandoned. They are absolutely essential. But more is needed to raise public consciousness of the problems and the need for global cooperation in applying urgent efforts to solving them.
A novel approach for shifting global consciousness is suggested by experiences of therapists engaged in various forms of healing such as Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch, WHEE, Emotional Freedom Techniques, and various forms of shamanic healing such as the Hawaiian Ho’oponopono. While mainstream science has largely ignored these approaches, they have begun to confirm their efficacy through rigorous scientific research.
There is fascinating, impressive research evidence suggesting that a collective consciousness exists, linking the consciousness of every individual person into a vast, combined awareness. There are impressive meta-analyses of research confirming telepathy, clairsentience and psychokinesis as components of collective consciousness. These are of such a high confidence levels that the chances that the results are random occurrences range between less than one in a million to one in ten million billion billion. To a lesser degree, but still impressive, are many individual studies of healing, with results reaching to probabilities of less than one in a thousand, and a meta-analysis of distant intentional effects on electrodermal responses (used in lie detector tests) at a probability of less than one in a billion. If we accept collective consciousness as a fact of our existence, then each of us is like a brain cell in the mind of the All.
The collective consciousness may then offer us various ways to address and heal humanity’s abuses of each other and of our planet, such as wars, wanton carbon emissions that are producing global heating, along with other programs and acts of self-interest that leads to poor allocations of natural resources, pollution, and other problems. We can promote these changes through shifts in the collective consciousness of humanity and of broader planetary awarenesses – including awareness of ecological and social programs that address practical aspects of these problems.
If we ask ourselves why people are so abusive towards each other and our planet, an interesting answer comes to mind: Humanity is suffering a collective post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). People who are abused have a high likelihood of abusing others. Taking this into the collective behaviors of humanity, this is one of the core psychological mechanisms bringing us to the point of the collective suicide of humanity and the genocide of countless other species on this planet – through wars, global heating, pollution and wanton ecological mismanagement.
As each of us works to clear the dross of our personal, individual hurts, angers and other residues of personal abuses, we are thereby contributing in a small way to the clearing our former negative contribution in the collective consciousness. This is like clearing the ‘big screen’ of reality, one pixel at a time. It works, but is almost certainly too slow a process to save our planet from its current crises.
However, releases of collective negativity can be markedly enhanced if we set the intention that all our personal releases will simultaneously invite releases of similar negativities from others in the collective consciousness, of which we are a part. In this, we can take lessons from Ho'oponopono, which teaches such clearings in individual, family and community therapy/healing. These types of releases can clear our inherited consciousness through our family of origin, as well as the consciousness of our families of choice, community, nation and the entire planet.
Transcending space and time through the collective consciousness (which the research mentioned above shows us is feasible), it is possible to clear our lingering negativities from our own and others' past lives, past relationships, and the past lives of everyone in the collective consciousness through all time. All therapists can help to release major collections of negativity by systematically facilitating with their clients similar releases as individuals, and this is simultaneously an opportunity to release a load of collective consciousness negativity. Such a concerted focus on clearing collective negativity could help to transform the negativity of humankind, which manifests as a collective post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Using Ho’oponopono (a Hawaiian healing method), WHEE (Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT), or any of many other varieties of healing as a platform to heal the collective consciousness, we can release the angers, fears and hurts that lead us collectively to behave in these destructive ways. At the same time, each of us can be using our own individual healings not only to release negativity, but also to build positive, healing energies in ourselves and the collective consciousness, as practiced in WHEE. Similarly, therapists can help clients to do this type of clearing of the collective consciousness as they practice self-healing approaches on their own.
A much more detailed version of this article, with research references, has been published in the International Journal of Healing and Caring – on line, 2008, 8(3), 1-18 .
http://www.wholistichealingresearch.com/col_con_hooponopono_whee.html
Daniel Benoir’s article is a major contribution to the consciousness shift we need to create a viable society. It provides an inspiring vision of how to move therapy from an individual preoccupation, however valuable, to a contribution to ‘a purpose larger than ourselves’.
Well done!
Andrew Gaines
Alliance for Sustainable Wellbeing
Sydney, Australia
I totally get the collective consciousness thing. It's real and it's powerful. One can see just how powerful it is simply by looking at where we're at: industrial capitalism, addiction to consumerism, the ability to go about daily lives as if everything is just fine while the Earth's systems collapse around us, and so on. The thing about collective consciousness is it works whether we're aware of it or not and it is value neutral just like any other law of nature. (At least this is how I see it). So somehow there is the immediate need to reach enough people (and how many is enough?) willing to become conscious in a Gaian, positive, evolutionary way and also willing to work with it rather than just know it personally and put it aside as we go about our daily lives. If you know what I mean.
I'm glad to read this -- it makes the case very clearly for what i feel is the crucial backdrop for all the activist undertakings we do in regard to global heating etc -- actually, when you contemplate deeply on it, their is nothing we can really DO about this apart from aligning with each other and with a Higher Power. AA and 12-step aware people will recognise this as the first step for recovery from addiction. This is the message we have to carry, in our aura, in our personalities, not so much in our words, but in our acts.
I hope healers of all traditions and methods who recognise the basic method would unite in attuning themselves and all with whom they connect to this Evolutionary Force which is carrying us forward even through this global crisis.
Where are you guys? On tour home page you invite submission for your "next" issue in June 2009. Having found some thinkers i really agree with, i'd be sorry if you are dropping this -- can i help? i have time, and a computer.