World Peace

“My life is my message.”
Mahatma Gandhi

There’s a scene in the first Iron Man movie, where Tony Stark is watching TV and sees a report on atrocities happening on the other side of the world. He immediately dons his newly invented Iron Man suit, rockets himself over there, and saves a village.

For me this was a very satisfying scene. I am someone who cares to the point of deep pain about the events of the world, especially things that get little or no coverage in the major media. My deepest wish is that upon hearing of some new horrible thing I hadn’t known about, I could immediately go out and make it stop, then be home in time for dinner.

I know I’m not alone in this wish, hence the popularity of the superhero fantasy to begin with. Yet this type of fantasy lacks an awareness that every figure in history who’s effected real, lasting change has operated with:

People unconsciously match each other.

It’s our most primary instinct, before survival, to imitate the people around us as a way of advancing the species. We do it without knowing we’re doing it, and will become immediately more thoughtful or anxious according to who we’re around. No one is doing anything to us when this happens, we match on an instinctive level with whoever has the most energetic weight.

If you carry a lot of energetic weight in a high state, you will naturally transform any room you enter, no matter how depressed, violent, or traumatized the people.

But it goes deeper than psychology. A few years ago I took several classes in Ortho-Bionomy©, an extremely gentle, non-invasive bodywork technique. In one of the lessons, we were taught to touch someone’s arm while moving in a manner that was most physically relaxing and enjoyable for our own corresponding arm.

We did not apply pressure or any special technique. We just touched them and focused entirely on relaxing our own body. The effect was the other person’s arm deeply relaxed, healing injury and improving range of motion more effectively than traditional techniques.

This lesson stayed with me, and when I started counseling I made a key part of my work with clients to relax the areas of my body where I sensed tension in theirs, and to tune into the enjoyment of the areas in my life where they struggled or sought assistance.

The result is over and over again my clients experience actual movement and change in their lives in the course of the session. They feel better, more relaxed, and empowered because I’m not giving them advice. I’m modeling what they want and they are instinctively matching it.

If I ever get hung up on trying to help them (which sometimes happens if their concerns too closely match my own), then the “problem” will gain energetic weight and any guidance I give ultimately enforces it because it plays at the level set by the issue.

This is why trying to solve problems on big or small scales doesn’t work, but finding internal ease does.

Now let’s go back to saving the world. When you think about the events of the world with any sense of anger, pain, frustration, futility, hate, etc you are letting the events set the tone and ultimately “win”, before any action is even tried.

If you hold compassionate awareness of them while focusing on the peace, joy, and ease in your own life, you create an external shift the same as if you were holding a high state in the presence of someone who was depressed.

It may be more subtle than flying to the other side of the world and blowing people up, as demonstrated in that Iron Man scene I like, but it is far more effective long term and easily done by any person at any time.

And it creates real, palpable change in your own life and the lives of others. What heals you, heals the world.