Global healing in the quiet spaces

There was this rule. When I volunteered at the Global Youth Peace Summit in Austin, Texas (an event that brought together 70 youth & young adults from diverse backgrounds throughout the world - many of whom were refugees from warring countries)…

A rule that was accepted by everyone - including this young Israeli nurse and her peer from Palestine.

The two had never met before, but they’d both endured the terror of generations of conflict, and internalized the competing narratives of their lineages.

But, at the Peace Summit, there was this rule.

“When you speak during a talking circle, don’t share something you know. Say something you feel. An emotion that you carry, from first-hand, lived experience… And, when someone else shares a feeling, don’t respond to that feeling with your words. Don’t interrupt the space after their emotions to overlay your own thoughts onto their experience. Allow the space for them to own their feelings and be in process. If you feel compelled, use the quiet aftermath of their vulnerability to feel with them.”

It was a rule that encouraged silent spaces over the clamor of vocal opinions.

Because those caldrons of personalized viewpoints often keep suffering intact, or even exacerbate it…

And we were trying to heal.

But silence. How uncomfortable.

Yet in the silence following each person’s vulnerable share, healing began to take root - because there was no noise from the outside world to interrupt that process.

I was ten years younger back then, and it wasn’t easy for me to honor that silence. For I was an intellectual. I’d studied a lot to become a fixer and a problem solver. I hadn’t yet evolved beyond my egoic need to be seen as a “humanitarian,” and I believed that only my voice, projected into a group, could allow me to be seen as such.

But what I learned at that summit, was that the world didn’t need me to be vocal.

It needed me to be vulnerable.

To quit projecting an image of myself as the humanitarian.

To instead be in intimacy with my humanity, in a way that my ego couldn’t hijack and package as a brand to the outside world.

Because the only medicine that will ever have the cure … is authenticity.

Not opinions.

Not ideolology.

Not a self-righteous lens through which we judge others as wrong - implying that we know what’s right…

The right way to show up during a genocide.

The right way to care for the world.

The right way to be self-less.

The medicine that allowed “Yael” from Israel and “Baha” from Palestine to end the apartheid in their minds and interweave their humanity was not the noise of the outside world. It was turning within…

I said within, not away.

It was dropping out of their minds and all the judgments that lived there, and accessing their emotional body…

It was sharing their emotions, from their lived, first-hand experience.

And because everyone in the room accepted the rule…

There was silence for the one sharing their pain to be witnessed by others.

And in the silent witnessing, the group, including the supposed “enemies” were bonded together in un-interrupted empathy that would influence the choices they made for the rest of their lives.

An empathy that permeated the sensory bodies of everyone in the room, and that helped heal humans from all over the world,

A Collective Medicine that’s still rippling out because the summit participants carried that healing back to their homes across the globe.

I witnessed global healing in the quiet spaces. And it was medicine-making.

The week ended with perceived “enemies” crying together, committing to taking that medicine back to their warring communities in the Middle East.

A lot of people out there want to tell us about the right way to show up to world crisis…

But there is often a necessary silence lacking in the world - especially among persons of influence, who’ve mistaken their projected opinions for their humanity, who use the algorithm’s love of inflammatory content to project more noise into the silent spaces,

Into the spaces where a humble, yet critical mass of humans, are doing the unpopular work of getting quiet enough to witness, and being transformed and wisened by what they witness.

In this space, we are not isolated by ideologies, nor dissociated by intellectual analysis…

We’re instead united in our willingness to witness emotion, and to feel it with others.

Where we go after that empathy is given the space to seep in and become part of us is what we create together.

May this message not only open your heart for the world outside your home,

But also remind you of the healing that can happen in the relationships inside your home.

When we don’t have the space to be witnessed, we don’t have the space to heal. And this can tear us apart in psyche, body, and relationships.

That’s one of the reasons I’m teaching this class in a few weeks.

Click here to check out: The Health Impact of Your Relationships: Healing your psyche, body, and relationships as a Connected Whole.

Equal opportunity passes available for anyone who needs a financial pass right now. Just reply to this email to make your request.

Meet again soon…

All love,

Amanda