I recently did a workshop with one of my favorite peeps, Bob Thurman, at the beautiful Menla Mountain Retreat Center…..so I thought I would share some of his unlimited wisdom. Here is Bob talking about Peace and Nirvana at the Menla Mountain Retreat Center in October 2006. He explains how nirvana is the ultimate, real state of our existence and how we can develop a peace within ourselves that absorbs stress.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Michael Beckwith tells us that even enlightened beings burn their bagels on occaision.  Rumi tells us that there is no worse pretense than the pretense of perfection.  Maslow tells us that there are in fact no perfect human beings.  I often consult their wisdom when I find myself all up in their stuff because I just did something silly or when I’m struggling with something that was so clear just the other day.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What does existing freely mean? What makes it so difficult to live unencumbered, without restriction and utterly at ease?

Freedom is our right. Living, in its most illumined sense, is the pure evocation of this right. Yet our day-to-day lives have become so mired, so overwhelmed by our messy, controlling, shamed, angry, muddled, and frantic small minds. What’s lost is our ability to live freely.

Last month, I spent the eve of my birthday writing and meditating on how I would spend my special day. The pervasive message was to let myself be profoundly free for those 24 hours, to permit myself to be totally released—without attachment to anxiety or concern, without holding onto trauma or drama—just to live. I could taste how it would feel, such bursting freedom, like the sensation of blissfully diving off a high cliff and soaring with abandon through the air, or floating, peaceful and unburdened, on the most benevolent wave. What I also realized was that needing an occasion to so wholly let go was ridiculous. But it also gave me focus, a mantra and deep intention. This week I’m planting the seed with you.

From when I was a teenager, I have loved Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’. Now, 20 years later, I sing it to my son at bedtime. I can’t imagine a more soulful plea for inner freedom than when Bob urges “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.” While I sing, my heart brims at the look in the clear pools of my son’s eyes, open as he is to the stark beauty of the words, but not understanding, at least not yet, why they are so important. Sadly, our adult lives seem to be made up of ever more restricted encounters with freedom, and with the incessancy of putting ourselves in and taking ourselves out of jail.

Still, freedom is available at every turn. Sometimes emancipation happens spontaneously, say for instance, at the sight of the full moon through wispy clouds from an airplane window. The mind magically gives way, the heart springs open, and whatever has been pent up becomes un-pent. Sometimes it happens when we are despaired and broken down, on the brink of assumed insanity, and boom, a release. Sometimes it happens when we get intensely quiet, and begin to see through our self-imposed chains.

The Zen priest Norman Fischer explains that this latter quieting, this practice of seeing is actually the manifestation of our freedom. He says, “Basically what [freedom] comes down to is just being ready on all occasions to find out something new. To be totally surprised, totally willing to start all over again.” Isn’t this just it? We spend so much time pushing, wanting, grabbing, competing, and agonizing, when all there really is for us is to go back to go, to peel back to the limitlessness of a child’s broad gaze.

Our life’s arc is a matter of uncovering this freedom that is already right here, regardless of how caged we have grown over the years. Even in the most trying, heartbreaking, terrifying, hideous moments, we are free. We really can move gracefully through our mystifying lives, one breath at a time, liberated in mind and buoyant in heart. If Bob Marley doesn’t do it for you, find a different song of freedom. Just find something, and let go.

A few months ago I had a chance to hear Gabrielle Bernstein and Kris Carr give a lecture on “Crazy Sexy Miracles” and I was completely blown away by both of these amazing dynamos. Gabrielle teaches from the metaphysical text A Course in Miracles, and she spoke about how each time we shift our perception from fear to love we create a miracle. Our internal shifts enhance our external experiences. Serenity kicks in, fear subsides and we know that all the love we need is inside us.

When it was time for Gabby to introduce Kris Carr to the audience, she spoke about Kris’ diagnosis of cancer, and said something that struck me to the core. She said that the miracle is not that Kris has learned to live (and thrive) with cancer, but that she has learned to live without fear of cancer. It helped me to see the ways that fear is running my own life, in the areas of money, relationships and health, and to see that there is a better way.

Since then, I’ve done group coaching with Gabby, I’ve shared her work with many friends, and I’ve also had the opportunity to read her latest book Spirit Junkie. This book is such a valuable manual for how to choose love in our fear-driven modern world. Gabby tells it like it is – being a woman in your 20s trying to find your way in the world can be tough. Gabby speaks honestly and openly about her struggles with finding meaning, feeling different, trying to be cool, heartbreak, drinking, drugs, addiction and recovery. Gabby doesn’t sensationalize the troubles of her past, dwelling on juicy details. She bravely shares her story with a focus on the lessons she learned, and how she overcame her struggles to carve out a path of joy and love.

Through working with Gabby, I’ve learned that in every interaction I have – on the subway, at work, with friends – I have the opportunity to be a miracle worker. If you want to get more inspiration and happiness flowing through your life, I recommend you check out Spirit Junkie and find out how you too can become a miracle worker!

Here’s what our friend Kris Carr has to say about Spirit Junkie:

“I couldn’t put Spirit Junkie down. It’s a beautiful book with a profound message: choose love. But let me be clear. Spirit Junkie isn’t your garden-variety new age tome. It’s hip, fresh, edgy, and raw–just like Gabrielle Bernstein. Through personal memoir and modern interpretations of A Course in Miracles, Gabrielle shows us that an intoxicatingly happy and baggage-free life is possible if we’re willing to break our fear-based habits. Simply put, Gabby is a force, a trailblazer, a powerful spiritual leader for the next generation. She inspires her readers to rise up and walk the talk along with her. No matter where you are on your personal journey, this book is a terrific addition to your soul toolkit. Let Spirit Junkie be one of your manuals for a better life and then share the information with everyone you know. I will hold many of its wisdom pearls close to my heart.”

Check out Spirit Junkie on Amazon.com.

Energy Medicine refers to a broad range of therapies that all have one thing in common.  They all consider that the human being consists of a physical body capable of thoughts and emotions, but also has an energetic system that supports and nourishes the physical, emotional and mental, with all of these systems being tightly integrated.

The integration between our emotions and our physical body is obvious to anyone who has gone through a period of great stress.  By using emotion altering techniques such as meditation and visualization, a person can actually impact on the physical body, triggering its ability to auto-heal, an ability often referred to as the placebo effect.  What is less commonly understood is that there is an energetic component to this mix and that both an individual’s emotions and physical body can be directly affected via energetic intervention.

To put things in perspective, let’s examine a few of the more widely accepted therapies that are based on an energetic understanding of the human being.  Perhaps the most widely known system is acupuncture.  Acupuncture has been around a long time.  One of the classic texts of acupuncture, still held to be largely valid today, is Huang Di Nei Jing (The Yellow Emperor’s Medicine Classic), believed to have been written in the second century BC. 

The basic premise of acupuncture is that there is a vital energy (Qi) that sustains the body and gives it life.  This Qi circulates throughout the body in a system of meridians (like flow lines or highways).  Simplistically stated, when some part of this energetic highway system gets blocked or overcharged, then the body does not have what it needs to sustain proper health, and “dis-ease” then results.  This “dis-ease” can take many forms.  As an example, a weakness in the energy flow affecting the immune systems of the body can result in infection taking hold within the body.  Another example would be that an imbalance in the flow of Qi caused by emotional stress or trauma can result in digestive problems.  By treating the energetic imbalance, both the physical and emotional complaints can be directly improved.

The professional acupuncturist can diagnose imbalances in the flow of Qi.  Once a diagnosis is reached, then the acupuncturist can increase or decrease the flow of Qi along the meridians that require correction.  Acupuncture has documented results in dealing with a wide variety of conditions, including many conditions where western medicine has no effective treatment protocol.  Because acupuncture is using the body’s own energies to help the body heal itself, treatments are generally safe and are often used as alternatives to medicine or even surgery.

Another type of energy medicine that is gaining popularity in North America is Homeopathy.  The underlying premises of homeopathy are quite different from those of acupuncture. One of the fundamental principles of homeopathy is the “law of dilutions”.  This law holds that the lower the dose of a remedy, the more effective the results will be.  Homeopathic remedies begin with natural plant extracts which are then diluted to a point where virtually no active molecules remain.  The belief is that the diluted remedy contains the essence of the original substance and that this essence will interact with the patient’s physical, emotional and energetic being to produce the desired improvement.

Unlike acupuncture, homeopathy has only been around a few hundred years, being first proposed by a German physicist named Samuel Hahnemann in the late 18^th century.  Homeopathic remedies are best delivered by a homeopathic doctor, who will take into consideration the full situation of the patient in determining the remedy.  A case history will include not only the physical symptoms, but will also explore in depth the emotional and mental well-being of the patient so that the diagnosis will result in a solution that considers the whole patient.

A lot of homeopathic remedies are readily available over the counter in pharmacies and health food stores.  Some of these are highly effective – Rescue Remedy from Bach Flower Remedies is great for getting past a short term trauma (especially with children) and Arnica is often used in homeopathic form for muscle soreness and arthritis.  Homeopathic remedies are completely non-toxic and when properly used can be an effective alternative to medication.

Many other forms of energy medicine are becoming increasingly available within the North American marketplace.  Many of these involve interactions with a therapist who is using their own being (usually their hands) to transmit or impart energy to the patient.   Some of these therapies have a long history, such as Qi Gong, which like Acupuncture dates to the time of the Yellow Emperor in China, or Chakra healing which dates back even further into the East Indian culture.  Most are more recent such as Reiki, which was discovered by Dr. Usui in Japan in 1922 and was first taught in the west during the 1970’s.  Therapies that began in the last two hundred years include Cranial Sacral Therapy, Healing Touch, Body Talk and others.  While each technique is different, often these practitioners are channelling either their own energies or a “universal” energy into the patient, or are in some other way working to enhance the patient’s own natural energies, removing blockages and enhancing the energetic flows.  A key ingredient in these treatments is often the intent to heal and to do no harm.

Numerous forms of energy medicine can be practiced by the individual themself.  Yoga, Tai Chi and some martial arts are considered by many to be practices of energy medicine as they work directly on the integration of the physical, the emotional and the energetic.

There is little scientific documentation on the efficiencies of many types of energy medicine, in large part due to a lack of western research.  However, more and more established institutions are beginning not only to explore these therapies, but to accept them into their array of healing tools.  Brigham and Women’s Hospital is a teaching hospital affiliated with the Harvard Medical School.  Included within their organization is the Osher Clinical Centre for Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies.  The Osher Clinic is offering as well as researching such therapies as Acupuncture, Cranial Sacral Therapy, Therapeutic Tai Chi and Yoga along with other alternative therapies.  As these therapies become both better known and better documented, we can expect to see more medical organizations responding to their clients’ needs with holistic, non-medicinal approaches.

References:

National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine – http://nccam.nih.gov
History of Traditional Chinese Medicine – http://www.shen-nong.com/eng/history/zhou.html
Acupuncture Foundation of Canada Institute – http://www.afcinstitute.com
Homeopathy – http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy/
Cranial Sacral Therapy – Upledger Method – http://www.upledger.com/
Cranial Sacral Therapy – Methode Surrender – http://www.methodesurrender.fr/
International Institute of Medical QiGong – http://www.qigongmedicine.com/
Reiki.org – http://www.reiki.org/faq/HistoryOfReiki.html#usui

Over three decades ago, amidst a sea of healthy, young gay men whose consciousness and life-styles could be described as expansive, I celebrated a hard-earned freedom some people will never know. Then suddenly, many became very sick and started dying. I, too, became terminally ill. It wasn’t even called AIDS then, and HIV had yet to be discovered.

Those were the horror years: going to the hospital daily for myself or sick friends, going to memorial services, caretaking sick lovers. This poignant history, and the unique perceptions I’ve drawn from it, are what I bring to this writing. Disease has become a teacher of love and wholeness for me.

Disease transformation is the naturopathic shifting of our perception and experience of a disease. It is cultivating a transcendent perspective about our ailments that is nonlinear and multidimensional, evoking an experience of peace and spaciousness.

A shift in perception and experience of a disease can actually alter how an ailment chooses to manifest: becoming more aggressive or receding. Like all of us needing to be loved, disease responds well to acceptance and nurturance. Loving all parts of our selves, including the diseased parts, yields only love and renewal.

Disease transformation occurs below the cognitive mind, where a history of traumatic conflicts is locked in the body. By tapping into our most meaningful and primal energy vortex, we can access a potent resource for our journey toward wholeness. When energies are awakened and allowed for, the healing transformation is an organic, gentle process.

Focalizing for Disease Transformation allows a lightness to fill the air. Though subtle, this kind of shared pleasurable experience and energy expression is very restorative. It is exactly what we want in disease transformation: a shift from exhaustion and struggle to one of ease, insight and a grateful re-awakening.

Focalizing is a dynamic and effective process that allows us to respectfully set aside familiar thoughts and feelings and instead access our innate intelligence. It can benefit anyone who is in a crisis of consciousness, or in a state of feeling stuck, or feels trapped by life’s circumstances, including disease. We reconnect with a natural resource that conveys new perspectives, often illuminating previously unseen possibilities for moving forward with grace. In learning how to transform overwhelming life situations we can suspend our everyday thinking-mind to a timeless source of change. Focalizing allows us to develop a newly enlightened intelligence that becomes integrated in all aspects of our lives.

My personal experience with HIV/AIDS, heart disease, cancer, and addiction is that disease transformation graces a further awakening of holism. It provides the recovery of personal wholeness and transpersonal connection: a feeling of being whole and complete in oneself, with the cosmos, with nature, and with all things.

Reprinted from GoodTherapy.org – June 2011

It took me 13 years of teaching asana, and over 17 years of practicing it, to finally take a seat for meditation. Until recently, if I managed to sit down to meditate, I felt the irresistible magnetism of the dishes, the inbox, laundry and the cabinet to reorganize. Nothing could make me sit still for more than a few minutes, and on the few occasions I did, I felt fake every time, as though I was missing something. Turns out I’d needed a manual to help me crack the code.

Anodea Judith’s “Eastern Body, Western Mind” is shifting my relationship to, and my navigation of, meditation practice. Given practical details about each energy center (chakra) in the body (note: the word is pronounced with “ch” like “choice,” rather than “sh” like “shall”), I’ve learned to be more specific and purposeful in the meditation seat. I’m learning to locate, in my actual physical body, the places where unresolved confusions have been stored, which activates a ready focus for my breathing when I sit — in my own time, in my own words: the ultimate empowerment. Most importantly, I’m learning to generate more listening and respect for the closest people in my life — the ones who’d become accustomed to getting the worst of me, while my students, teachers and friends got the best.

The succinct “takeaway”: a level of consistency in my sitting, and therefore my behavior. Now I can be as astute a listener with my mom as I am with a new student detailing an injury. That wasn’t always the case. I was misappropriating my compassion away from my family and only toward my students. This made for a hilarious paradox — lovely, compassionate, generous teacher with her students versus the inattentive, angry, punishing girl with her family. And when my son was turning four last fall, I saw him trying to take it on. He became like a skycap at the airport, old enough to start helping me with my proverbial baggage, and that was so scary to see. He was impatient, mad, screaming “me.” I knew I either had to handle that weight myself, or pay dearly for the service he’d try to provide for the rest of my life, taking on the problems of parents as we’ve all done.

So if you’re reading this and you don’t currently have a meditation practice, I’ll finally get to the point, and offer you an example of one of the more universal coping mechanisms I’ve encountered in myself. Then you can get a feeling for how this might map out an aspect of you, and get you sitting down with yourself for meditation.

Place one hand on your belly, just below your navel, breathe right there, and read on. If it’s hard for you to hold space for others when they’re getting emotional, stay with me. If you have the compulsion to fix and serve others (teachers and parents to your parents, that’s you), this will help you bring healing to the cycle of having long been depleted emotionally, and you don’t need to blame anyone. In fact, you might find yourself thanking them for placing you in that situation so you could come to this profound healing for yourself.

This region holds your needs as a child — a child who had viable needs but was unable to ask for what was most needed. So instead, you either tuned out or started helping to avoid the feeling of not having your own needs met. Older siblings in big families, households wherein someone was ill, or a parent left abruptly or parents fought incessantly, this is you, too. This region holds the sensations of having been rejected, whether consciously or subconsciously, while others’ needs were addressed. It’s interesting to look at this because we do have a choice: We can blame and dramatize the situation (been there, done that), or sensitively bring balance to that situation by softening our own interior reactions to it.

On behalf of your family members, who in all cases did their best with what they had, you are here to evolve that feeling, that circumstance, or that cycle of behavior, in honour of them. And as awful as it may have been, you really did pick the right life.

Keep your hand on your belly, and breathe deeply there. Let it extend and really open when you breathe in, and soften back toward your spine as you breathe out. While the chakra just below this one (pelvic floor, root chakra) is about grounding, stability and focus, this second one is all about how we flow, feel and yield. It’s related to the element of water, which constitutes 80 percent of your body. When I’m teaching or speaking, I can take cues from anything, seen or unseen, and am completely in the flow – that’s my comfort zone, my hiding place. But when it comes to being alone with myself, I’ve avoided my own healing (and my meditation practice) by placing my focus literally anywhere else.

Your second chakra holds your guilt and your shame. This region also holds your right to feel. If someone was consistently volatile (or exceedingly incommunicative), your entire family had to create ways to handle that subconscious emotional tyranny, and everyone was constantly directed away from their own wellness into impending crisis mode. So you were all waiting for the next outburst or problem, and the flow in your house, your belly and your heart was re-routed in that direction. And you’re all still sort of exhausted from it. We needed healthy examples of how to address our own selves with huge love, and how to nourish ourselves with great care, and we have a chance to be that example now, for everyone around us. It’s never too late.

Here’s where meditation begins to make sense to me, at long last. After learning about the second chakra, the next time I sat down, for the first time ever, I was there for myself, in the same attentive way I’d been for my students. I put my hand on my belly, and sat with my body, by myself, feeling the block and breathing it open. Super simple, really. I’m just gathering information and breathing it open all the time now, whether I’m sitting or standing.

So now I’m listening, with this opening, which is healing me and my relationships with my family. I have a much broader, gentler view of how I can slow down my reactions, in real time. I’m no longer cursing so much in my classes because I’ve seen that my own healing vibration is pinched when I go down that road, which means my students’ healing is being similarly stifled. Misused words give birth to tiny contractions in our bodies. As funny, or inviting, or even comfortably familiar as it can be to hear your yoga teacher curse, I don’t want to perpetuate that tension in the context of class anymore. For now I want to explore what it’s like to just deliver the teachings, sans drama.

And now, when I’m having a really difficult conversation, or trying to get my kid’s shoes on, I’m breathing more space into my belly, and into everyone nearby. When I remember this with my son, I let him dance around in my boots for one extra moment (his favorite pastime) instead of rushing him into his own shoes and out the door. (By the way, the irony of his wanting to wear my shoes isn’t lost on me.) Every time I bring the work back into my body, I restore a bit of balance to myself, to him and to our relationship, thereby clearing the path for him to do this intuitively for himself going forward.

Take time to sit, unravel what resonates with you, ask for help if you need it and give yourself the gift of your own attention. Rather than finding some way to gain control over my animal instincts or take cover from the dictatorship of my mind or my past, I’m specifically bringing attention to the vortices in my body that been have been closed or too open, and I can just be still when I sit. That stillness helps everyone near me. When I bring awareness to those junctions via my simplest breathing in meditation, instead of feeling lazy, fraudulent or disconnected, I’m experiencing a reverent healing.

http://www.amazon.com/My-Spiritual-Journey-Dalai-Lama/dp/0061960225/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&s =books&qid=1289734633&sr=1-1-spell #_

The new Autobiography, “My Spiritual Journey” by the Dalai Lama provides a vivid and moving portrait of the Dalai Lama’s life journey that is personal in tone but universal in scope. He explores three phases or commitments of his spiritual life—as a human being, as a Buddhist monk, and as the Dalai Lama—each of which has made him more dedicated to exploring and teaching human values and inner happiness, promoting harmony among all religions, and advocating for the civil rights and well-being of the Tibetan people.

In My Spiritual Journey the Dalai Lama brings the world a powerful message: one of suffering, success, and hope. A vivid and moving portrait of his life journey, My Spiritual Journey is organized into three parts:

1. Childhood: The Dalai Lama’s childhood memories show his human dimension as he stresses the importance of relating to each other on the basis of common humanity.
2. Buddhist Monk: He reflects upon his experience as a Buddhist monk, explaining the source of his bodhisattva ideal, and inviting readers to transform the world by transforming our own minds.
3. The Dalai Lama: In his role as the Dalai Lama, His Holiness explains his wish to establish Tibet as a sanctuary of peace for the world, where humanity and nature can live in harmonious balance.

The Dalai Lama also weighs in on the great issues of our time, including 9/11, religious militancy, violence in Tibet, and the environment. He offers his thoughts on what he hopes will happen when he steps down, and considers what his next incarnation might be.
Despite the trials of his life, the Dalai Lama’s hope and good humor shine throughout book. Talk about Ubuntu….he truly embodies it!! I highly recommend the book.

Insanity, it has been said, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This is what appears to be happening globally as the evolution of humanity is at a turning point: Old paradigms and a challenging new awareness are straining to coexist.  

Our world is primarily anchored in linearity and duality, black or white thinking, and we keep doing the same things over and over again, despite the fact that they might not work for us.  Dualistic conditioned thinking negates experiencing holism and a true richness in our lives. 

It is a deadly addiction that threatens not only our serenity, but the very survival of our species; consider the enormity of current environmental and economic challenges facing our planet.      
Yet, I remain an optimist! Logic dictates that if I can achieve spontaneous remissions, which I have on more than one occasion, we all have the potential for similar possibility. My first, in the mid 1980’s, was from two particularly deadly cancers that I was diagnosed with. My belief is that a remission from cancer, AIDS, or heart disease is possible, and the same can be true for our negative habitual thinking and preconceived notions.  
The eminent cellular biologist, Bruce H. Lipton, and internationally-known humorist, Steve Bhaerman, have collaborated on the highly-touted book, Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (and a way to get there from here). In it they ask, “Could the vision of a coherent civilization whose collective consciousness is focused on love, health, harmony, and happiness truly create a field strong enough to manifest Heaven on earth?”

There was great resonance with this book for me because of my own healing techniques I teach: Authentic Process Therapy, Stage-Two-Recovery, Dynamic Linking, and Focalizing. Authentic Process simply means being real, a difficult task in our world. Focalizing works to help remove blind spots. Dynamic Linking is a way of networking, relating to people, and accessing inner and outer resources. These methods foster a graceful release of outdated thinking, addictions and all; a newly anchored foundation with principles for stepping out into the unknown and allowing for a future wanting to emerge through us to manifest.

I see transformation in the challenging lives of my clients, colleagues, friends and family on a daily basis. And for myself, I try to focus moment-by-moment on recovering from the addiction of “how it should be.” All of us are being gradually met by a new world of promise and possibility—perhaps even a spontaneous remission of collective insanity.  The disease of conditioned thinking may be even easier to resolve once we redirect our will and intention and empower ourselves, individually and collectively, by changing some of the stories that we cling to. 

A historic example of empowerment through changing stories was President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech about putting a man on the moon before the end of that decade—and we did in 1969.  That was a significant paradigm-shifting moment that still impacts much of our lives today; from technology, global awareness and even to heightened consciousness. One of the early astronauts, Edgar Mitchell, was so awestruck by the view of the earth as a throbbing living entity, that he experienced a profound sense of universal connectedness on his return trip from the moon.  He later founded the Institute for Noetic Sciences (ions.org), whose mission is to “Advance the science of consciousness and human experience to serve individual and collective transformation.” IONS remains one of the most grounded and respected organizations studying human consciousness.

Prior to his death, cultural anthropologist Joseph Campbell shared a view of mythology that is important as we move forward. He explained that mythology is what provides a society with reflection of its plight, grounding in the present, and a sense of security, or stability in its common journey. He also suggests that things have changed so quickly in the past 60 years we have been unable to create new mythologies to mirror our existence to give us a sense of stability in the present. Our old mythologies and rituals, cultural or religious, simply fail to meet our current needs. Until we center ourselves in ourselves, we will remain adrift, without the gift of our own inner-wisdom. Campbell suggests the next logical, evolutionary mythology will be “self mirroring,” or learning how to comprehend one’s inner-self as their primary referent.   

Coming full circle, engaging ancient and indigenous wisdoms with our modern psychologies and recovery models, has the potential of being a glorious evolution. And there is no shortage of support available to guide the transformation of our thinking from our fractured, limited perceptions, to healthier, holistic perspectives. We simply need to welcome it.

Michael Picucci, PhD, MAC, SEP, is a practicing psychologist, psychotherapist, and consultant in NYC and the architect of Focalizing. His professional expertise and health advocacy spans a wide-range of psychology, counseling, somatic, and neuroscience disciplines. He has 30 years experience researching addictions, trauma healing, sexuality, and interpersonal and group dynamics. He has authored Organic Solutions to Real-Time Challenges: An Introduction to Focalizing, Ritual as Resource: Energy for Vibrant Living, and The Journey Toward Complete Recovery: Reclaiming Your Emotional, Spiritual & Sexual Wholeness.

What’s driving kids toward their fanatical electronic networking? There is increasing evidence that more is involved than smart phones, PCs, and other technological marvels. Hidden factors rooted in our genetic heritage may be at work. “Humans form social networks because the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs,” says Nicholas Christakis, professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of Medicine and Medical sociology at Harvard Medical School.

Christakis and James Fowler, associate professor at University of California-San Diego in the Department of Political Science, are coauthors of the recent book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. They have shown that cooperative behavior is contagious, and that it spreads downstream from a single individual in a cascade of influence that involves dozens more individuals, reaching at least “three degrees of separation.” Their research shows that the initiating influence can involve a variety of behaviors, emotions and ideas, including kindness, happiness, and generosity.

Seen from this perspective, it isn’t the electronic gizmos and doodads that have caused an obsession with networking in our kids; rather, the gadgets may simply make it possible for them to live out their underlying genetic predispositions for cooperation and empathy.
The ultimate incentive for kids’ interconnected, empathic way of relating to one another may be that it, well, feels good. Beginning in the late 1980s, reports of the “helper’s high” began to surface — a feeling, following selfless service to others, of exhilaration and a burst of energy followed by a period of calm and serenity. The feeling was similar to that following intense physical exercise. Researcher Allan Luks studied over 3,000 Americans involved in volunteer services and found that the feeling lasted several weeks, and that the euphoric sensation returned when they remembered the action. The helper’s high is accompanied by positive changes in the body’s immune function and a lower level of stress hormones. As Ralph Chislett, a sixteen-year-old whose volunteerism involved delivering supplies to a post-ER recovery unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, said, “Volunteering helps you become a better person. You get a good feeling when you’re helping people because you’re making a difference in their lives.” Steve Culbertson, president of Youth Service America, a volunteer resource center in Washington, D.C., said, “It gets under your skin. The real big secret to service to others is the majority of the benefits accrue to you. It just becomes who you are. It’s not something you pick or choose; it’s just part of your nature and makeup.”

Although not all teen volunteerism is altruistic — some schools make volunteer work a requirement for graduation — today’s teens are nonetheless volunteering more than any other generation in history. According to Independent Sector, a coalition of not-for-profit organizations and foundations based in Washington, D.C., 59 percent of teens volunteer an average of 3.5 hours per week. Annually, that’s 13.3 million volunteers totaling 2.4 billion hours at a total economic value of $7.7 billion.

It may be no accident that the most plugged-in generation in history is also the most volunteer-prone. The empathic urge may underlie both areas of behavior. In fact, electronic connectivity and volunteerism have proved to be inseparable. Disaster relief efforts following the Haitian earthquake in January 2010 were largely made possible by an unprecedented mobile electronic communications effort. When one clinic texted that it needed fuel for its generator, the Red Cross responded in 20 minutes. Translators volunteered their efforts electronically from faraway locations without ever setting sight on Haiti. Within a few days a map was constructed via satellite pictures by a firm in Southhampton, UK, showing every one of the 5,000 collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince. A Craig’s List-style “we need, we have” website was set up to help anyone who needed services, and an online database was constructed to monitor the capacity of hospitals in real time. The Haitian tragedy showed that empathy, charity, and electronic communications are natural allies.

Plugged In — To What?

For decades a realization has been growing, fed from a variety of sources, that there may be a collective level of intelligence that transcends individual minds. This idea is rooted in antiquity. The Upanishads, India’s sacred scriptures that date to the middle of the first millennium BCE, proclaim tat tvam asi, “thou art that”: the human and the divine are one. Similarly from the Christian tradition, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21, KJV). The esoteric sides of all the major religions recognize that the individual consciousness is subsumed and nourished by an infinite, absolute, divine, or cosmic source, and is ultimately one with it — the scala naturae or the Great Chain of Being. It follows that, at some level, all individual minds are united and one within the boundless All. The goal within the great wisdom traditions is to realize our essential unity with one another, and our inner divinity or cosmic consciousness, and to enable this awareness to make a difference in how we live our life.

For a century we have witnessed a steady outpouring of books that, in one way or another, affirm the recognition that consciousness is larger than the individual mind. Examples include pioneering works such as R. M. Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness, Emerson’s essays on the oversoul and transcendentalism, William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, Arthur Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being, and C. G. Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. More recent contributions include Erwin Schrodinger’s My View of the World and What Is Mind? and Mind and Matter, Ken Wilbur’s The Spectrum of Consciousness, Peter Russell’s The Global Brain, Nick Herbert’s Elemental Mind, Huston Smith’s Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, David Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and David Darling’s Soul Search.

An overlooked influence in the recognition of collective consciousness is the development within the social sciences of dialogue and group process as ways of promoting consensus, creativity, and problem solving. A variety of terms are being used to describe these exercises — “developing group synergy,” “unleashing collective creativity,” and “developing team coordination.” Organizations are discovering that when individuals unite in a shared intention, something mysterious happens: a group intelligence emerges that transcends that of the individuals involved, a theme developed by James Surowiecki in his courageous book The Wisdom of Crowds. As psychologist and entrepreneur Carol Frenier says, “In these group experiences, people have access to a kind of knowing that’s bigger than what we normally experience with each other. You feel the presence of the sacred, and you sense that everybody else in the group is also feeling that. There’s a sense of openness and awareness of something larger than yourself. Your ability to communicate seems broader. What is astounding to people is how much creativity comes forth in a setting like that. You have a sense that the whole group is creating together, and you don’t quite exactly know how.”