With the world spinning out of control, how much of an impact could I possibly hope to have?

About 15 years ago I enrolled in a continuing ed class to satisfy my license requirement for training in pain management. The training I chose was a weekend course on using meditation and other spiritual tools for managing pain. I felt excited, yet slightly guilty, that I was going to get credit for this unconventional approach to the subject matter. I had begun to have a deeper awareness that health and healing went way beyond one’s physical body, so I was eager to learn as much about that as I could.

At some point late in the weekend, I remember being asked to meditate. I guessed we were doing experiential learning where we put ourselves in the shoes of our patients to see how it all worked. Yet the instructor wasn’t framing the lessons that way – it was really more focused on our own experiences of being doctors.

I was a little frustrated because I was there to learn how to help my patients by leading them through meditations for their pain, but I was only exploring my own mind and breathing and answering the questions as they pertained to me, a person without a primary pain problem.

So we sat. Breathing, meditating, clearing our minds.

I don’t remember exactly how the instructor phrased it, but he put forth the idea that when a person sits in meditation attending to their inner state, they affect something beyond themselves. That was the first time I had ever encountered that concept.

This opened a question in me, coupled with more frustration: what good does me (one person) sitting in meditation possibly do for anybody else – much less the bigger world around me?

It felt so selfish, so limited in its reach and impact. So I can sit in silence and breathe. Big deal. Beyond being relaxing and potentially helpful for my own issues, was there any other point? It was a course on treating pain in our patients and I was being encouraged to meditate for myself.

I wasn’t at all making the connection between me doing that alone and it having an effect on somebody else. Although the instructor tried to explain it, I just didn’t get it.

Although the weekend overall was enjoyable, I felt a bit restless and incomplete leaving with that unresolved question. But a spark had been lit within me.

Admittedly, at the time I was pretty naïve, uneducated, unaware, and unenlightened compared to where I am now (although also admittedly, I have a long way to go to truly understand most of what I find fascinating these days).

I was also firmly planted and existing in this reality, this 3D consciousness, this physical world of matter and linear cause and effect. Not being in an expanded mindset of awareness makes it almost impossible to see anything other than what you can touch right in front of you. That was me back then.

I had no idea that our minds are powerful, our hearts even more so, and that thin veils separate multiple co-existing realities. I had no idea that we create the world around us through our beliefs and thoughts, that feelings carry frequency, or that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience in human form.

And I certainly had absolutely no idea that we were all One, existing in an energy web, connected by our nervous systems and all that is transmitted through them.

I really only had a very rudimentary understanding of energy at all.

But I was blessed.

I was blessed with an education in naturopathic medicine that had all of these things embedded into its philosophy and its therapeutics. Even though I had not fully brought it all into my conscious understanding, the seeds of these concepts had been planted in me by the elders of our medicine who taught me water cure, naturopathic philosophy, homeopathy, botanical medicine, and more.

I think that on that day in the spiritual pain management class, one of those seeds received the necessary elements for life, and sprouted.

Fast forward to the present day. I now understand much more clearly that tending to ourselves, especially our inner states, is the most impactful thing that we can do to affect change in the world around us. Helping others is not just a byproduct of helping ourselves, but it can actually be the point of focus.

And I have to say that this comes as a huge relief to me lately.

The last four years have been super challenging in a multitude of ways. One after another giant problems, huge griefs, unfathomable insults, and sobering truths have been uncovered and hurled at us - for sure collectively, but also for many of us individually as well.

In 2020 life abruptly changed for the people on Planet Earth. No matter what you think the core problems are or who is responsible for them, I think most everybody can agree that rather suddenly there seem to be a lot of high-level, desperate situations that are in need of deeply effective, newly hatched, long-term solutions.

But overwhelm is the norm and not knowing what to do or where to start is common. Many people share the sentiment that “I’m only one small person. What could I possibly do that would make a dent in the insanity of the world?”

Enter the huge relief: the one thing that we each have absolute control over and can attend to immediately and forevermore is ourselves.

“We improve the health of the world when we tend to our souls and our hearts, because we all fit together.” - Gladys McGarey, MD

When we focus on our own souls’ development by becoming aware of our thoughts, feeling our feelings, intentionally being in states of higher frequency (like love, gratitude, compassion, joy, etc.), and regulating our nervous systems so that we are able to receive and transmit higher universal intelligence, we help the world. All of the world. Whatever and whoever needs an infusion of peace, love, and joy.

We don’t have to choose a specific cause or direct our healing intention to anything in particular (although you can). The frequency will find what needs to receive it. Anything lower vibration will respond to a higher vibration, especially when the higher vibration is made dominant by multiple people working on their soul’s development at the same time. In numbers we become more powerful – without even knowing what the other people are specifically doing out there!

We are all connected. We are all One. We are all in co-existence. Our systems are all seeking to sync up with other humans. Intuitively we know this in the depths of our minds/hearts/souls.

By continually engaging in actions that link us, we breathe our oneness into embodied, physical reality, and healing potential is put forth into the world.

A word about what to focus on to bring expansive light, love, and healing to others…

Finding your own joy and purpose allows the expansion of more joy and purpose for the benefit of all…everybody…the whole world…each and every human.

In naturopathic medicine we speak of the vis medicatrix naturae, a.k.a the healing power of nature. Its nickname is “the vis” or “the power”. Star Wars fans will recognize a parallel here with “the Force”. Some other ways to express this are life force, life force energy, chi, or prana.

Life force is what enlivens us.

We must LIVE our lives actively to keep life force energy coursing through our bodies.

So we must find those things that give us joy – that we FEEL joyful when doing - and DO them as a way of stoking the fire of the life force within us. A strong life force energy brings you greater health, happiness, creativity, and connectivity with others and with Spirit.

And as your life force strengthens within you, it is transmitted out into the field around you. Just like a raindrop landing on a spider web sends vibrations throughout the whole web, your increasing life force energy will cause the entirety of the world wide web of the interconnected energy field to oscillate. For we are all affected by everybody else.

In her book The Well-Lived Life, Gladys McGarey, MD talks about the universe being like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Each of us is a necessary piece to create the final big picture. Each of us is a unique individual, yet an integral part of the whole. It takes all of us to complete the picture for everyone else. But not by doing the same things and being exactly alike. It takes all of us acting in our individuality and participating in the collective community to create the resonant glorified picture of wholeness.

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