Integritus Prime

My video on Mornings with Marilyn recently was about the terror attack in Sri Lanka over Easter. In that video, I touched upon some metaphors to help explain what we humans are doing to ourselves. In a nutshell: self-destruction.

Previously, I spoke about Christchurch as well, and the need for compassion and love to overcome hate and insecurity.

If we take the example of cancer, which is an auto-immune condition, we see that cancer is a way for the body to attack something in itself that it determines to be a threat. We attack our own immune system. Apply this to racism and hate crimes, and we see that we are attacking our own brothers and sisters because we perceive them as a threat. In this one organism, Earth, some of us deem others to be “bad, wrong, less than” and commence killing them. The result is pain and destruction that impacts the whole organism, or society and nature as a whole.

We humans are doing exactly the same thing to the climate. We are destroying our own life support systems – ocean life, forests and wildlife, freshwater systems, soil, and more – under the guise of “development” – which is really overconsumption and short-sighted political and economic greed. As a result, we are facing accelerating climate change, another kind of cancer that affects everyone, and every part of our global organism, albeit in different ways. The horrific California fires, intensifying Pacific cyclones, and many other signals cannot be ignored or denied.

As we destroy climate stability, we are also destroying our bodies. Eating meat and dairy products has a significant negative impact on climate change, and is associated with a host of lifestyle diseases, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and yep, cancer. Driving cars and flying in planes (I am very guilty on the latter), contributes to greenhouse gas emissions as well as asthma and other illnesses.

Thankfully, there is hope; nature shows us a way. In nature, diversity of genes, functions, shapes, sizes, colors and more is prized as a path to resilience. Nature values differences to make a robust whole in the form of ecosystems. If we return to nature’s principle for affirming life, we would embrace diversity of religion, creed, thought, ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, and so much more, instead of perceiving them as threats. As I’ve said before, there is no scientific basis for racism. Also, in nature there is no waste, and we would be wise to adopt a more “cradle to cradle” approach, and some companies are leading the way, yay!

We must restore us humans as a harmonious part of the richly diverse organism we call Earth, an idea that is now quite mainstream, according to this New York Times opinion piece. To bring us back to balance, we must uproot the trauma that leads us to anger, hate, and aggression in our own daily lives. It begins within, and reflects into the outer world. Every harm we cause to another, we cause to ourselves.

If you’d like to learn more about how to connect the dots in your own life and be a more positive force for healing yourself, humanity, and the planet, drop me a note.