Occupy Your Heart: On being a catalyst for systemic transformation

The Occupy movement continues to highlight the grave inequities and injustices in our economic system. There appears to be enough energy in the United States and even around the world to keep the ground swell going for awhile. Good. It will need a lot of sustained energy to make a difference over time. It will also require a societal heart transplant.

Systemic counseling for group transformation defines two kinds of change: surface change and second-order change. With surface change the motto really is “the more things change the more things stay the same.” Surface change does nothing to fundamentally alter the system, the underlying order of a group, large or small. It’s like putting on new clothes over a still unwashed body. The stink will eventually become all too apparent in time.

Second-order change brings systemic change—a real, fundamental re-ordering of the structures that sustain groups, be they mental, relational, financial or other forms of power infrastructures in societies. Giving women the right to vote was a second-order change. So were civil rights laws. Whenever there is a redistribution of power, there is second-order change.

In order to effect a second-order change that is sustainable, not only is a lot of collective energy required, a heart change is also required. Having been a catalyst for systemic transformation on a national level, let me explain a bit of my story and what I mean.

At a church I was an associate pastor of many years ago, I experienced sexual harassment and when I reported it along with some other things, I was retaliated against. I eventually ended up filing civil rights discrimination lawsuits to hold the larger church body accountable for its many inequities and injustices against me and many others as well. It was a long drawn out case that dealt with constitutional law, church-state issues, and clergy sexual misconduct. It required me to take an activist stand, just as the Occupy movement is doing.

But for true transformation to happen, it required more than just taking a stand, important as that is. It also required that I find all the places I criticized about the system in my own heart. If I criticized the aggressive tactics of the larger church body against me, I looked for aggression within myself. If I was furious with their lies against me, I looked for the lies I told myself and others, no matter how small. I would then look for the core of good within the bad. I would find the light in the darkness. I would see that aggression and lying were tactics I used to protect myself when I didn’t feel safe. Then I would understand that the impulse to protect was good, even if I or they had twisted it into aggression or lying, and I would have my compassion for myself and them and then I could forgive myself and them.

When I would heal my own heart and soul by doing these steps above, the system would shift—often immediately. Right after I would heal within, I would get a phone call, email, or other notification that the courts had suddenly had a “change of heart” and rule in my favor. Or the larger church system would suddenly relent and choose to negotiate when previously they refused. This happened repeatedly over several years until finally the story played itself out. In the end, I became the first ordained minister in the country ever to be granted civil rights by a federal ruling—a second-order shift establishing new rights for clergywomen.

So, in shifting our unjust economic system, the Occupy movement is taking a crucial first step. The next step for all of us who wish to shift the economic inequities is to look at our own hearts with regard to how we use money. Upset about corporate greed? I hear you. But let us look within. How much of your income do you donate to charity? Even, or especially, on a good year? How many things do you buy that you don’t really need? The latest flat screen tv, the latest iPhone, the latest ____? Where are you wasteful and unaware with where your own money goes? Do you balance your checkbook, keep a budget, and balance necessities with play that help and do not hurt the environment (extra car trips to do errands, or plane rides to vacation spots around the globe)? Where are you not honest with your accounting? How much debt do you have on credit cards? Any criticism you have of the system, turn it around and ask yourself where it is in you.

I have seen some of these things in myself and in many people who are protesting the inequities in our larger system. These questions of mine, uncomfortable as they may be, are what is required to bring about lasting, heart-full change on a systemic level. There is no judgment in these questions. It is honest self-inquiry only. But after taking a stand, until we heal within with all the love, compassion, and forgiveness we can give ourselves and others along with any corresponding corrective action we can take in our own lives, any change we are able to generate will either be surface change or short-lived at best.

Use the Occupy movement’s energy to motivate you to look within and heal. Occupying our hearts is a stimulus plan that will really bring true second-order change!

You are Safe (No, really, you are.)

The question of security comes up a lot in healing work. It is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed because it is difficult to heal if you think you are in danger on any level. Mentally, emotionally and physically, your energy is drained when consciously and unconsciously you are trying to make sure you (and your loved ones) are safe and not destroyed. This is instinctual in so far as our bodies are wired for survival and our DNA has generations of coding in it to pay attention to signs of danger. We evolved this way in order to ensure our species would survive in hostile environments with predators around threatening to attack.

Most of us no longer live in an environment where a lion could be poised to pounce on us at any time. However, many of us still live with this constant sense of needing to be on the alert or an underlying dread or foreboding. This is especially the case when some kind of trauma has happened to us, destroying any sense of security that we may have managed to have prior to the trauma, despite our predisposed genetic hardwiring telling us to always be ready to fight or run for our lives.

As is well known, after big trauma people will often respond by curling up into the fetal position. This is also what can happen energetically when you go through any kind of trauma—big or small. Your energy draws up from the ground and curls up tighter around you to try to protect you. This is all fine and good. It is the animal instinctual part of you trying to reconnect with the feeling of total security in the womb. The difficulty is that once the trauma is over, your energy may not relax and re-extend itself, thus keeping itself cut of from the earth’s energy and from the grounding needed to heal. This can result in getting into a constant feedback loop of fear and anxiety which can also get hardwired into our brain’s patterning. The ability to move and release these anxious energies out of the body and into the ground can remain unavailable because you have unknowingly blocked your root chakra (energy center) from reconnecting with the earth.

Thus solution #1 is to reground yourself. We are electromagnetic beings. We need grounding just like electricity does to work properly. People in many developed countries, especially urban and suburban environments, don’t get enough direct contact with the earth. For one, your shoes’ soles are mostly made of synthetic elements that disrupt the back and forth flow between the earth and our bodies. For two, we sit on chairs, sleep on beds, ride in cars—all keeping us up off the ground. For three, if you live above the ground floor in a condo or apartment building, there is even more distance between your natural connection to the earth. For four, much of non-rural life is connected to machines and technology more than nature.

The more we disconnect from the earth the harder it is to stay healthy and to heal when that is needed. The extra energy we carry in our bodies from stress is unable to leave effectively and it becomes stagnant and stuck causing inflammation and heat in our physical body, anxiety in our emotional body and compulsive thoughts in our mental body. This is one of the main reasons I think it can be difficult to heal thoroughly in a hospital. Some of them are skyscrapers! How can someone in a room fourteen floors up reground their energy after a trauma or surgery if they are so far away from direct contact with the earth on a 24/7 basis? (I think some research should be done to see if ICU psychosis could be reduced or eliminated by situating ICU’s on the ground floor and if possible, letting patients walk outside in their stocking feet.)

So, too, for you, walking outside on the ground or grass without shoes (leather moccasins are one exception) is a good way to help reground your energy. Sitting or lying on the ground or grass or beach is another good grounding exercise. Kneeling and putting your hands in dirt (gardening) can help too. I noticed that almost all of my clients who suffered from situational depression had blocked root chakras, so I encouraged them to spend time in direct contact with dirt!

Solution #2 to help yourself reground is to visualize that you have roots growing out of the bottom of your feet and tail bone (the root chakra) and into the earth. Send them all the way into the earth and see them spread out throughout the earth, then come back up into your feet and tail bone with your awareness. Feel or imagine the connection and flow between the earth and you. Say the affirmation, “I am safe.” Then feel safe. Imagine this if you have to. Imagine that nothing can harm you ever. Imagine what that would feel like. And let your body feel that feeling from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. Tell your body, too, “You are safe.” If you’ve been through trauma talk to your body compassionately and gently like you would a frightened child.

“You are so grounded.”

I get this statement a lot from intuitives who read my energy. I believe it is because of the mystical awakening I had several years ago. I learned I was safe when I woke up and knew that my truest self was God—that my core was divine essence, (and so was everyone else’s.) After the shock of that startling insight wore off, I realized the direct implication of this was that I was safe no matter what. No matter what! No one could really do me harm in any way, even if they killed me. I was who I was and nothing for all eternity could change that.

So solution #3 to ground yourself is using this bit of mystical mojo. That fetal position our bodies like to curl into to feel safe? The understanding that each and every one of us has God within is also true in reverse. Each and everyone on of us is also always in God, in the womb of God. Imagine yourself all curled up inside God, totally safe (and all your loved ones, too). Affirming this spiritually can ease the need to physically curl up into an actual fetal position after trauma and keep the fight-flight-or-freeze triggers at bay even after trauma. When you know you are safe, even disease that comes up is not an occasion for worry, because it is just a teacher to help you learn and integrate more. But it can never in no way destroy the real you or your loved ones. EVERYONE IS SAFE! This is a truth that can heal the world. No more grasping. No more hoarding. No more striving. No more greed. No more attacking. No more fear.

To be sure, this is a knowing that comes through direct experience with this truth and cannot be manufactured through gimmicks, and being human, we will still have fears, griefs, and other emotions that arise in our being to work through and process. In the meantime before this truth becomes your own internal knowing, spending time in nature, connecting directly with mother earth, and visualizing and affirming that you are always safe can help your body relax again, stretch out, and begin to feel the security that is always true: You are safe!

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The idea that you are safe is one of the key chapters in my book, You are Light. For more writing about this truth and meditations and exercises to help you read You are Light. Energy healing sessions that unblock your root chakra can also help as can EFT-Free for Life—a tapping technique considered “acupressure for the emotions” that neutralizes the hardwiring for anxiety, stress and PTSD triggers. I offer both of these in my healing practice. For more information visit my healing webpages or email me at monica@monicamcdowell.com.