I am writing this on a Friday when school strikes are organized around the world and tens of thousands of children are protesting for urgent action against climate change.
Greta Thunberg, the young environmental activist, has spoken at the United Nations, asking politicians if they are too scared of being unpopular. I will have to risk being unpopular at a time when progressive forces are supposed to agree with Greta who wants to fight the bad guys, the politicians, the greedy corporations and actually, all the adults who are to blame. I very much wish I could agree with Greta. Protesting is a spectacular, rewarding and empowering thing to do and I know it is a way for the young generation to handle the fear of extinction. I do understand.
Not fighting along with Greta
There is no simple way to explain why I choose to be unpopular and stand still while everyone else who is supposed to be a good person is fighting along with these children. But I will give it a try.
The issue is this: the solutions these beautiful, well-meaning young people are demanding come from the same way of thinking as the problems. They arise from the same mindset, even as these young activists believe themselves to be new-thinking. It seems so simple: just do this and that, they say, and it will solve the problem. To this, many politicians, business people and academics reply, with sincerity, that it isn’t that simple, because as soon as you stop doing this, that will stop working. Practically, everything is so intertwined and complicated that anyone who knows enough also understands why it is hard to change anything without destroying everything.
The Path to Planetary Health
We are globally in the situation of someone who is sick, whose body is malfunctioning in too many ways. Everyone has finally realized that this is a serious, maybe fatal condition. From shock and fear, everyone is asking for a different drug and procedure, but each of these has serious side effects that threaten to kill the patient faster than the disease. It is understandable that our children are demanding that we save the patient. But the more everyone shouts and the more remedies we anxiously pour into the patient, the less health returns.
Why I am standing still while many others are ready to fight is because I know that this is not the way to regain planetary health. Just like a person, our planet is an organism made up of a huge number of systems that are supposed to be perfectly attuned to each other. We, human beings, are one of them. Not only is our biology intertwined with the planet’s biology, but our mental and emotional energy is too. The state of health or disease of the planet is inevitably also the state of the human body and mind, they cannot be separated.
When our young demand that politicians stop allowing new coal mines, it is the same as demanding that a lung cancer patient stops smoking. It is fully logical, but oh so unrealistic, because the chemical addiction to tobacco exists in every cell of that organism and can’t be easily stopped. In that same way, the addiction to unhealthy ways of production, distribution and consumption, along with unhealthy ways of living, feeling and thinking, exists in every system humans have created. The patterns are in our own minds and we express them in all we do.
The Holistic Intelligence of Nature
What is important to understand is that toxic, destructive behaviors and systems can only arise when we don’t act in harmony with the holistic intelligence of our personal and planetary nature. The state of our planet today is a result of the way we have defied nature, aggressively pursuing our individual demands, some of us more effectively than others. To return to health we cannot use actions rooted in the same aggressive separation. Regardless if we are fighting against nature to fulfill our financial goals or against each other to fulfill our justice goals, we are still fighting from a perspective of aggressive separation and superiority, and not acting from harmony and equality with all life.
Many holistic health systems teach that to regain health, we need to return to a state of peaceful harmony and from there, allow our body and mind to heal from within. It is the disharmony of disconnection from nature and each other that has brought about disease in the first place. Homeostasis, the state of dynamic balance any organism strives for, is disturbed by fear, anger and conflict and is enhanced by nonjudgmental attention and love.
Your State and the State of the Planet
No patient has ever been shamed, intimidated, bullied or forced into healing, even if this is what we time and again are taught to do to ourselves and our planet.
To people of any age looking for better ways I say- realize that the state of your mind and emotions is inevitably intertwined with the state of the planet. By being in harmony with life, you enhance the health of every being on the planet. Whenever you are well, it ads to everyone’s wellness, and from there, our actions have a chance to be conscious and creative for the benefit of all species. I know that so many are scared when facing our global challenges, but we cannot command life or each other to keep our planet alive, and we don’t need to. If we realign with the laws of nature, then life will return on its own terms.
Why not give our full attention and energy to friendly and considerate attitudes and structures, so we can regaining the harmony and intelligent cooperation we need in order to live? Love might not be the greatest power in the world, but it is certainly the only power that heals instead of destroying. If we put our trust in love instead of anger and judgment, it can show us what it can do. Healing has to start in our minds and hearts to reflect in the world.
That is why I am not out there fighting, but stand here in acceptance and love, inviting everyone to peaceful, powerful, intelligent ways forward that include and benefit us all.
You might be interested in reading my book Healing Is Child’s Play – How to Regain Your Innocent Mind and Easily Heal Anything. It addresses the huge shift in perspective brought by an expanded consciousness, and describes how to apply certain techniques in consciousness to heal our societies and environment.