A heart attack, to take a fairly obvious example, needs to be treated physically, in the emergency room, but it also may require healing at deeper levels. Emotional pressure may need to be resolved. The person experiencing a heart attack may have beliefs about work and/or identity that are asking for revision. Energy healing addresses dis-ease at physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels.
So to understand the the pandemic sweeping across the globe from an energetic perspective, I looked up some of the related psycho-spiritual aspects (as they're called), starting with the immune system. What I found left me breathless in it's accuracy.
Carolyn Myss, Ph. D. and medical intuitive, published Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing in 1996. It's a seminal text for students of energy medicine. What she wrote then is spot-on today.
By way of background, our immune systems are governed by the health of our root chakras. My root chakra connects me to my family of origin and the values of the community I was raised in.
Growing up as the oldest of six kids in upstate NY, attending Our Lady of Lourdes with my siblings, and being watched over by my friends' parents as we ran around the neighborhood, I soaked up the shared beliefs of my tribe. I was shaped by my mother, a nurse, and my father, a grave digger. My grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins visited regularly when we were kids and my Grampa Deck was a fixture on Saturday mornings (donuts in hand) because both my parents worked.
Myss reminds me the immune system is energetically connected to these tribal roots and to tribal power. Tribal power is the sense of safety, security and empowerment we feel as part of a healthy community. In such a tribe we feel like valued members of a valuable whole.
For example, I felt a deep sense of tribal power at my father's retirement party years ago. For the occasion we invited family, friends, and colleagues. Dad's nickname was Digger because he worked for the Diocese of Syracuse as Superintendent of Calvary Cemetery (located in our back yard). So his colleagues were the guys that cut the grass and dug the graves, some of whom loved him like a father. They were also funeral directors who had inherited their livelihoods from their fathers.
(It should be noted that funeral directors have a distinct sense of humor. For my father's retirement party, they dragged a giant spray of flowers to the podium. Fresh from some soul's grave.)
There was much laughter and admiration. I talked about being raised by my mother (who ran the house) and my father -- a quiet guy with a great sense of humor and a perfectly-timed side-eye. I recall invoking Dan Fogelberg's Leader of the Band:
His gentle way of sculpting souls took me years to understand
I said that my father was my hero, the kind of person I wanted our children to grow up to be like. Thoughtful, hard-working, steady. On his knees every night at bedtime. An annual tradition of shopping on Christmas Eve with his buddy Brownie Brown. Buy a gift, have a beer ....
My brother Mike's wife, Kelly, recalls the first Christmas she came to our house as a teenager dating Mike. Dad was reading The Night before Christmas to kids lined up on the couch. It was as traditional as the re-purposed peanut butter jars filled with home-made cookies lined up on the hutch. Mom gave them to the postman, the funeral directors, and the kids in the neighborhood whose mothers didn't bake cookies.
Everyone present at dad's retirement was part of the tribal culture I grew up in. I don't want to sugar-coat it -- there was also an underbelly, as there is in all systems. Divorce. Alcoholism. Certain injustices when it came to school discipline that broke my father's heart. And loss.
We lost dad's father, my Grampa Deck, when he was only 63. I couldn't imagine how my dad would get through the eulogy, quiet as he is. But his voice was strong. My aching heart was swollen with tribal pride as my father's voice rang out across the pews of mourners.
I share all these memories to define tribal power. I'm blessed with a strong foundation, a sense of myself as part of an imperfect but loving tribe. Because of it, our family immunity to external threats is pretty high.
Myss writes, Symbolically, the immune system does for the physical body exactly what tribal power does for the group: it protects the entire body from potentially damaging external influences.... Difficult tribal challenges cause us to lose power primarily from our first chakra, making us susceptible to immune related diseases.*
This strikes me as frighteningly accurate today.
Symbolically, our collective immune system is failing to protect us from damaging influences... Difficult tribal challenges -- like our current presidency -- are causing us to lose power from our collective first chakra. As a nation, we're losing our ground, our foundation, our sense of safety, security and trust.
We're vulnerable to Covid-19 because our collective immunity -- our resilience, strength and power -- is severely compromised.
Viral and other epidemics are ... a reflection of ... current social issues of the cultural tribe and the health of the tribe's immune system.
Sound far-fetched?
I know. When I was new to energy dynamics I was skeptical too.
Myss offers an illuminating example of how the zeitgeist affects our collective health. She cites the stock market crash of 1929 that plunged the nation into the Great Depression: Journalists and politicians, business executives and workers, men and women all described themselves as having been crippled by the economic disaster.
Soon afterward, in the early 1930's, the polio epidemic proliferated -- symbolically representing the crippled spirit of the nation. Those who felt most economically crippled, either by actual experience or by the fear of it, were energetically most susceptible to the polio virus.... It took a tribal event, an experience of physical strength, World War II, to heal the American spirit. A sense of heroism, tribal unity and an increase in jobs restored the pride, power and honor of our country.
The same may be said about the HIV-AIDS virus in the '80's that infected dis-enfranchised members of society.
In the same way, the current pandemic symbolically represents a weakness in our usually robust American resilience. A viral infection energetically represents joy being sapped from our lives. It leaves us bitter and angry...
...because our tribal power is eroding before our very eyes.
We are losing the kind of familial pride that I felt when my dad retired.
This begs the question(s): What exactly is wearing us down, making us vulnerable to a deadly virus? What's lowering our immunity -- our ability to withstand external toxins? What's undermining our collective resilience?
I argue it's the Trump presidency.
When I look at the life issues associated with the root chakra that governs our immune health, it becomes clear that they are indeed compromised in today's cultural climate. Our right to be grounded, nourished, healthy, prosperous, part of a safe home and trusted family, and to set appropriate boundaries -- all root chakra issues -- are severely shaken.
First Chakra Issue: Our Ground, Our Foundation
When I watch the evening news and the press conferences updating us on Covid-19, with reports of critical shortages, I see my country faltering. I see governors begging for help. I see young people ignoring pleas to stay at home, endangering their elders. I see alarmed nurses and doctors beseeching the powers that be for PPE.
Myss puts it this way: The cultural energy of our own country is being depleted by the need that some have to feel empowered at the expense of others deemed less valuable. Challenges to our biological immunity will follow accordingly.
A strong sense of tribal power is restored when we re-activate the values our democracy is founded on: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.
First Chakra Issue: Nourishment
I respect the expertise the president has gathered to guide the nation, but they seem to be under directives to kiss the president's ass. (Rectum, first chakra.)
Trump, the epitome of a run-away ego, has a hard time relinquishing the mic. He expects us to swallow his incoherent rambling, absent substantive content, just because it's coming out of his mouth. Alarmingly many do believe him (another threat to our collective immunity).
We are bereft, starving for accurate information and moral leadership.
We are also famished by our religious institutions, plagued by tragic sexual abuse, and social structures in which large swaths of the human family are denied their fundamental right to exist by systemic racism, sexism, and xenophobia. This whole notion that there's an us and a them.
If there's one thing the coronavirus is teaching us, it's the spiritual truth that All are One.
A strong sense of tribal power is restored when humanity is nourished, not depleted, by leaders who set the tone for tribal members.
Spiritual nourishment is restored to each of us when we access the indwelling divine. Practices and communities that encourage direct revelation of the divine fill our need for spiritual sustenance.
First Chakra Issue: Overall Health
The health of the nation is under siege by the virus itself. The administration is scrambling now, but why weren't warnings heeded and preparations underway to stave off infection months ago? Now President Trump is desperately attempting to boost national morale with drugs that he has a good feeling about. Sorry, Mr. President, we need more than your gut feeling.
The shocking lack of preparedness is affecting us physically. People are dying. Mentally we're anxious about our basic safety, our loved ones, and our ability to earn a living. Socially we're isolated, adjusting to living with the unknown. Its disconcerting to say the least.
Tribal power is restored when we assure health care for all. Fear and anxiety (understandable and appropriate emotions in these circumstances) ask us to act, so we must mobilize whatever resources and services we can offer to support ourselves and those in need at this crucial time.
First Chakra Issue: Prosperity
The Dow and other financial indices measure the prosperity of our nation. Recent roller-coaster fluctuations underscore the reality that tribal confidence is shaken. There is no steady hand guiding our nation.
Collective immunity falters when our president is more concerned about economic health than human health.
Tribal power is restored when we know that every man, woman, and child on the planet prospers.
Tribal wealth can also be measured by a new-paradigm economy based on humanitarian values.
First Chakra Issue: Home, Family, Trust
Our precious planetary home is in peril. Refusal to acknowledge and act swiftly upon climate change science terrifies us.
Our national identity is undermined by a leadership model in which deception, ego-centrism, an appalling absence of empathy, and colossal arrogance are worshiped in free-wheeling rallies that incite rancor between us.
The collective trust has been betrayed.
Tribal power is restored when we unite for causes that transcend our differences, like saving Mother Earth.
First Chakra Issue: Appropriate Boundaries
We have the right to our personal space. When it is encroached upon, we have the right to ask that our boundaries be respected. Read: Keep your social distance, please.
When our boundaries are violently invaded, trauma ensues. Personally and collectively it's devastating. We experienced this on 9/11.
As humans we have standards of decency -- commonly agreed-upon ways of being that are respectful of ourselves, each other, and the planet. When these are violated our immunity suffers; we become vulnerable to invasion by affronts from without.
To restore tribal power appropriate boundaries must be respected. Cozying up to brutal dictators? No. It's beyond the pale -- outside the bounds of acceptable behavior.
Some may say that I have not respected our president -- that my views are out-of-bounds.
While I don't respect his actions, I do respect his dignity as a human being. I express my views in a spirit of service, offering insight into the energies that inform reality. These are often lost in the chaos of unrelenting distraction from Truth. I have been gifted with symbolic sight and what I'm seeing now is virulent, infectious -- and threatens the collective soul.
I'm called to offer my perceptions as a channel and a voice for healing. My boundaries have been crossed by the very offences I'm calling out. It's imperative to challenge the toxic tribal power infecting the collective psyche.
How can we shore up our root chakras individually?
Maintaining the health of our individual first chakras depends on addressing our personal tribal issues -- our family of origin wounding.
This is often where the deepest pain resides in my clients. We often start the healing process by addressing core-level offences to the client's essential nature. Having those offences confirmed as wrong and having her essence seen -- perhaps for the first time in her life -- bring enormous relief.
Myss concludes with this important message:
The tribal beliefs we inherit are a combination of truth and fiction. Many of them, such as Murder is forbidden, hold eternal value. Others that lack that quality of eternal truth...are in violation of the sacred truth All is One. The process of spiritual development challenges us to retain the tribal influences that are positive and to discard those that are not.
It's time to discard the tribal influences that are bringing down our nation.
Our spiritual power grows when we are able to see...a deeper level of truth. Each time we shift toward symbolic awareness, we positively influence our energy and biological systems. We also contribute positive energy to the collective body of life -- the global tribe.
The energy generated on the occasion of my father's retirement made me proud to be a Deck. My heart brimmed with love for my family.
That evening was a gathering of the tribe, in much the same way weddings are, to celebrate a milestone with the people who are most important to us.
In such a tribe we feel like valued members of a valuable whole.
Too many of us don't feel that way in Trump's America. The whole is decisively fractured. Division is deliberately stoked. Americans are weary to death of the inflamed rhetoric of an ignorant and spiritually bereft man who believes himself to be an expert on everything.
We must re-commit to the compassionate work of healing ourselves, each other, our beloved nation, and the whole of humanity.
We must restore the trust of the tribe in the tribe.
Only then is our immunity restored.
Only then is our tribal power reclaimed.
Only then is our joy recovered.
The soul of our nation depends on it.
Leader of the Band by Dan Fogelberg
An only child alone and wild, a cabinet maker's son
His hands were meant for different work
And his heart was known to none
He left his home and went his lone and solitary way
And he gave to me a gift I know I never can repay
A quiet man of music denied a simpler fate
He tried to be a soldier once, but his music wouldn't wait
He earned his love through discipline, a thundering velvet hand
His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand
The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
His blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band
My brothers' lives were different for they heard another call
One went to Chicago and the other to St. Paul
And I'm in Colorado when I'm not in some hotel
Living out this life I've chose and learned to love so well
I thank you for your music and your stories of the road
I thank you for the freedom when it came my time to go
I thank you for the kindness and the times when you got tough
And papa, I don't think I've said I love you near enough
The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
His blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band
* Myss, Carolyn, Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing, New York: Three Rivers Press, 1996. I have placed all quotations from this book in italics (due to a glitch on my blog that will not produce correct "quotation marks.")
All these violations threaten our first chakra right to exist with safety and dignity.
We are weary to death of it. Worn out by a form of tribal power that is gutting the soul of America. It's no wonder our collective immunity is compromised.
Let's look at the emotional compo
Louise's Hay's powerful little book Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them lists lack of joy flowing through life and bitterness as the probable causes of a viral infection.
When I was learning how emotions, attitudes and beliefs influence the physical body, I was skeptical. If I'm bitter I'm going to come down with a virus?
Obviously, it's not quite that simple.
Yet these correlates have proven to be accurate -- active on some level of the psyche of my clients (and myself) -- as I've learned time and time again in my practice. They are surprisingly and reliable accurate.
The new thought pattern Hay recommends to address a viral infection is: I lovingly allow joy to flow freely in my life. I love me.
Self-love is an antidote. I'm constantly encouraging my clients to give it a try, despite inherited tribal conditioning that failed to teach us who we really are. Beings of strength, power and beauty with divinity inside us.
Imagine if we were taught that we are beings of strength, beauty, and power. With divinity inside us. If that belief was ingrained in all of us? And shared by our tribe about us? We'd be a lot less vulnerable to every external influence out there threatening our overall well being.
Infection: Irritation, anger, annoyance. You bet I'm annoyed! A nurse on the Today show said it best this morning. How are they feeling? Nurses on the front lines?
Outraged.
Justifiably so.
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