Why The Collective Healing Crisis?

Because violence can no longer serve as the root of moral authority in our world. If we want to heal, we will choose love.

Illness Does Not Occur Without a Cause

But oftentimes the symptoms of a disease are mistaken for the illness itself.

What we learn from integrative medicine is that symptoms can express an illness but are not themselves the underlying disease. We also find that symptom treatment often does nothing to relieve the root problem.

Often, this kind of superficial strategy does not touch the cause of the illness.

When a healing crisis, also known as a Herxheimer Reaction happens, this is a result of the body’s systems working together to eliminate and detoxify the body from the causal elements of said illness. This can be an altogether unpleasant experience because the symptoms of a healing crisis are often an intense version of the symptoms of the illness itself.

The body has to go through this elimination process to restore itself to a place of better health. Toxins accumulating for a long period suddenly enter the elimination organs all at once, as the healing crisis works to process and eliminate them from the body.

The more toxic the system, the more intense the detox process, and the more severe the healing crisis. Our body may exhibit illnesses as a response to toxicity so severe that it requires pressing attention.

This insightful essay by Tada Hozumi talks about the body’s natural adaptive response to toxicity as it relates to our current cultural state.

So, What’s Really Going On?

I find it to be no coincidence that I and more than one of my friends have recently fallen to a crazy intense illness.

I believe these breakdowns have come about as we are collectively beginning to move into a space of rejecting violence and power as tools to enforce moral authority. We are experiencing the personal versions of the larger cultural meltdown.

Physical symptoms have included the sudden onset of severe viral symptoms, nausea, eyeballs that want to vomit out the pain, bodies feeling like they’re locking up, throats on fire, foggy brains, and a panicked disaster mind convinced that a stroke (or something worse) is imminent.

From the reports I’ve heard, at least among my friends, these incidents have all been triggered by things like intense fights with people close to us, taking on big fears, or making huge leaps of faith.

Moving into the new story of interdependence requires that we both cut ties with the poisoned belief systems of the past, while at the same time honoring the forebears of our lineage with love, compassion, and ultimately — non-violence. We have to love the people of our past if we want to make it into our future. And this is fucking hard!

I believe these healing crises have all been related to the massive shockwaves of cultural change we are seeing happen all around us.

They’ve all been related to people taking a stand to create the new story, and choosing to walk away from the virulent toxins of our old cultural norms. The toxins that have been undermining so many of us and poisoning the very planet we live on.

A powerful network of wisdom is growing underneath the rigid scaffolding of white supremacy.

We have been challenged to hold our boundaries in the face of collective addictions to the cultural drugs of violence, fear, and rigid adherence to the old story of separation.

These crises have happened when people of the tribe of change have chosen to draw a clear line in the sand. And it’s hard for most of us to draw the line with firm grace. Instead, most of us end up kind of awkwardly setting our boundaries with the agility of a small child drawing their very first letters.

My Adventures In Healing

9ish hours of intense, sudden-onset chills, nausea, and brain-searing misery after having a sudden and abrupt argument with a close family member. This particular fight ripped the scab off a wound that has been festering for many years, and all the toxic pus that had been pushing on the scab and causing pain came gushing out.

The argument started in response to her assertion that she occasionally felt compelled to resort to corporal punishment as an appropriate way to teach “obedience” and “good behavior” to my children.

I boiled over immediately, and violently. All of my objections to the story of virtuous violence came tumbling out of my mouth.

I’ve not mastered my skills in Non-Violent Communication. Instead of being able to gracefully and skillfully holding my boundaries against the toxic ideals of the false ideals of virtuous violence, instead, I decided to try and cut the poison out with the equivalent of a dull kitchen knife.

This personal evolution and communication thing is messy, but I feel like I’m starting to make some progress.

Violence against violence is not the way to go. Trust me, it’ll make you feel sick inside every single time. But I suppose it’s a start. I hope I get better at this in the future because this is a skill I KNOW I’m going to need.

We’re all going to need it.

I Drew My Line In The Sand Against the Warping of Our Stories of Sacred Source & Self

By questioning her belief in the efficacy of corporal punishment, I aggressively challenged her belief in the story of a GOD who is supposedly loving and patient but demands obedience to his one right way via political subterfuge, warped ownership of women, and threats of violence. Just reference 1 Samuel 18 if you have any questions as to why I think this.

God is love. Period. I think when we look inside ourselves, we all know this. Just ask the plant medicines.

I think the dichotomy of religion to violence is exemplified by the rather tart bumper sticker that asks — WWJB (Who Would Jesus Bomb)

I also object to the current extremity of the political establishment. This particular relative of mine plans on voting for more of it. Trump 2020, are you kidding? More angry disparagement spilled out of my lips.

The Trump-Infected version of America is an extreme jingoist parody of justice and freedom, but it’s also, unfortunately, the natural evolution of a country and culture that was founded on the ownership of slaves and the establishment of whiteness as a power structure. Quinn Norton wrote two amazing pieces on this issue in The Message.

We need to be moving AWAY from violence and the hierarchy of domination as a basis for moral authority, not towards it. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. exemplified this movement. Now we need to finish the work they began.

Zaron Burnett III recently wrote another piece on whiteness and our (white person) relationship to it that was fascinating. It illustrates the changing cultural tides that this complicated issue is one even some white people are interested in maintaining.

It Was a Healing Crisis If I’ve Ever Had One

After the bout of illness that sent me home early from work, reeling into an unpleasant evening of alternating between sweating chills in bed and nauseous vomiting in the shower, I seemed to recover, as if by magic by the next morning. This was no common bug.

I believe it was an explosion of culturally-vectored toxins into my system that sent me into my illness. I could no longer tolerate keeping quiet about my true feelings about these poisonous beliefs with good conscience.

After many years of trying to ignore, suppress, or navigate around the lifelong build-up of these toxins and the way they have influenced my relative while still relating to her closely — I finally popped.

With this blast of honesty and emotions came the release of the toxins into my systems. They made me very sick within the span of a few hours. Time elapsed between our argument and the onset of symptoms was less than 2 hours. And I had been feeling just fine before our dispute.

The New Story of Interdependence Asks That We Learn To Let Go Of The Old Story With Grace & Love

Violence As Virtue Must Be Collectively & Compassionately Unlearned

My personal growth has been seriously impacted because of the close and unexamined relationship I have shared with this woman.

Our lack of healthy boundaries, honest affection for one another, the pain we have unwittingly inflicted on one another, and a shared inability to deal with the original cause of our conflict have been at the root of this problem.

In the past, I have tried to deal with the symptoms of this cognitive dissonance by numbing out, running away, and ignoring the darker sides of this person whom I love dearly.

But as I mature, I see that I will have to deal with these challenges bravely and with vulnerability, patience, and as much of the deeper truth that I can find along my journey.

It’s actually not about beating the bad guys and winning. It’s about knowing that WE ARE the bad guys (and girls) and finding a way to make a change of heart.

Steve Thorp & Julia Macintosh have addressed some of the implications of the collective healing crisis in their work as counselors, psychotherapists, and parents.

If we live in a crumbling world, then we are likely to feel like we are crumbling.

The answer to this enigmatic problem is that we must build lives that DON’T feel like they are crumbling in order to have the bandwidth to build a world that doesn’t feel like it is crumbling. Once again, my theory on fractals comes into play.

Which Comes First — People Who Culture Builds, or Culture People Build?

The Need for Individual Action Speaks to the Latter Option

We must begin to cut our ties with the violence of past practice, but we must also build the soil of our souls by reconnecting with our lineages and histories.

We must find the love and light of individual humans within the historical systems of fear and hate. We must reconnect to the primal urges of love and delight that motivated our culture to grow in the first place.

Individually, we will undoubtedly benefit from recognizing the powerful journeys our ancestors have taken.

The women who bore us, and the women that bore them — these humans have not had easy lives. They have not been faced with easy or certain choices. Yet we are all here today because of their actions and attitudes.

The men who hunted, and worked, and fought to survive and to protect and provide for their families did not always have the freedom and privilege of philosophical choices that we often make light of today. They were not always allowed the option of choosing to care and to speak their minds in the hierarchy of power that comes from societies based on the rule of might.

As we move into the future of our world, we can choose to draw strength from the stories of our past.

Only then will we truly begin to heal.

#onelove

If You Liked This Piece, Read More

Kaia Tingley is a writer, artist, podcaster, digital strategy nerd, and sometimes hot-tempered supernova with a wild, free soul. She holds a degree in Exercise Science from the University of Southern California, and black belts in two different martial arts. She practices massage therapy & shiatsu in the southwest hippie refuge of Austin Texas. Her work involves the pursuit of a smooth sustainable flow of energy through systems. Physical, emotional, technological, or cultural — the kind of system doesn’t really matter — the principles are the same. She lives with her husband, two young kids who like to climb on her while she types, and a cool old dog named Satchmo. You can find her on Instagram here or on LinkedIn here. Feel free to reach out by DM there if you want to reach her directly.