As we begin Living A.W.A.R.E. our whole outlook on life opens up. The deeper we go into our own Essence, the more we can see that in each other.
Isolation and loneliness are now understood to be major factors in both physical health and general quality of life. Feeling that we belong to a warm and nurturing community is vital to our well-being.
The US, along with many other Western Countries, is currently experiencing a mental health crisis of epidemic proportions. There’s an overwhelming amount of theories, books on those theories, social media posts, workshops and online courses coming out about mental illness and how to heal it, medicate it or at least learn to live with it as best you can. Why, in spite of this vast body of research, scholarship and pharmacological intervention, is depression, anxiety, teen and child suicide still on the rise? Why, with all the psychological and medical expertise, are things not getting better?
Is there something crucial we are missing?
I believe there is. And I also believe that a powerful remedy is freely available and is ‘hidden in plain sight’. This remedy certainly may not ‘cure’ all the suffering – especially the damage caused by decades, even centuries (might we even go so far as to say millennia?) of ancestral trauma, colonization, systemic poverty and racism. Even the nutritional deficiencies caused by soil degradation affect our moods and ability to function. However, this remedy, that just might begin to address the healing of all these issues over time, lies in the reawakening and intentional nourishment of our Essence – that deepest aspect of ourselves that knows itself to be part of all life. The Golden Rule found in some version in all cultures all around the world “do unto others as you would have them to do unto you” exists because, at some level, the other is us.
This is the level of consciousness where everything is interdependent. It ripples out into individual Souls each feeling separate from each other and separate from the natural world but each yearning for recognition and reconnection. Longing to feel part of the miraculous web of Life. Craving to re-member that it is, in and of itself, a miracle. Schools, Elder Care Facilities, churches, temples and Mosques, local neighborhood groups where the Essential Self of each one is honored and cared for are the spaces where the deep healing of much of our collective trauma can take place.