The Death of the Soul and the Need to Recover Your Sparkle
Many people these days notice that times are getting harder, that the western world at least seems to spin downwards, as if we were in a boat on a river that is flowing faster and faster as it approaches a waterfall.
We don't know what the future brings, and a multitude of changes, combined with pandemics and erosion of value systems, morals and age-old traditions has led to widespread uncertainty and a fear of the future that often turns to panic and freeze and eventually to a numbness of emotions as a protective mechanism.
This is what I call "the death of the soul" - the need to recover your sparkle is evident...
Others (Like Bessel van der Kolk) have described this phenomenon as typical for traumatized individuals, and it is not a coincidence that the diagnoses of PTSD and complex PTSD are increasing rapidly.
It seems that the fast spin of the wheel of life makes many people, if not all of us, more vulnerable to experience negative emotions like fear, depression, irritability or even anger or rage in response to injuries or trauma that may feel trivial to a healthy person in a stable environment, embedded in a coherent cultural and societal environment.
Our modern lifestyle and fast-paced and ever-changing messages, laws and the increasing overwhelm and uncertainty has led to widespread excessive and long-term stress and brain damage.
People's frontal cortex, the most human part of our brain, where judgement, forethought and planning are located, are more and more going off-line.
In situations like this, people often look for a strong leader to follow to relieve this stress and uncertainty, and the danger of evil people stepping up to be the leader is well know from history and the rise of Stalin, Hitler and others.
Typical for this is that these people seem to have good intentions and seem to be charismatic to most people - until it is too late.
"I never thought they would go so far", "I can't believe that that really happened"...
Growing up in Germany as a daughter of parents who grew up before and during WWII, I heard this often from my parents as helpless answers to my questions why no one noticed – or better, people refused to notice the signs – that Hitler was murdering jews and preparing for war.
As humans, we tend to only notice and see what we want to see, and, since most of us are good people, we have a tendency not to fathom that others, especially well-spoken and charismatic leaders, could be as evil as they later turn out to be.
Freedom of speech and thought are powerful weapons against those evil individuals, and this is what they tend to abolish first, with cunning psychological weapons. "Divide and conquer", preferential treatment of one group of people under the pretense of eugenics or righting a past wrong or punishing previous real or perceived wrongdoings of the forefathers of a racial or other group – is always part of this.
We should never forget that past wrongdoings cannot be righted by doing more of similar wrong things over and over – just to a different group of people.
For example, we cannot do right for jews whose parents were tortured by Hitler, black people whose ancestors were enslaved, or for adults that were tortured as children by abusive parents - by persecuting current Christians, punishing our white neighbors or putting seniors who are parents to rot in jail - in the now.
This is a difficult construct, as people who have been hurt or whose ancestors have been hurt, may long for revenge and see the perpetrators punished.
Punishment vs accountability vs responsibility...
Think about it: Fear of punishment works in the short term, as a deterrent.
In the long term only personal growth and a loving and logical education will serve to create a well-functioning society.
Is this utopia? Maybe...
The Urgent Need to Recover Your Sparkle
We need to emphasize our many similarities as all being humans and capable to love, instead on focusing on the differences and letting evil rulers tell us that we are different than any other group.
Words like "diversity, inclusion, and equity" sound wonderful, but are used in practice to effect the opposite, to give certain groups preferential status (with the pretense that some "oppressor" discriminated against them), to exclude certain groups by setting quotas as decision criteria instead of merit, and such creating a culture of envy, resentment, divisiveness and even hatred instead of fostering love and understanding.
I see this similar to communism, which sounds like heaven on earth when you read the theory of Karl Marx, but when tried to implement it, it turned out to be more like hell, as Russia under Stalin proved.
Humans are a weird race, and so far in history, democracy seems to have allowed the largest percentage of people to flourish and to pursue their own ideas of happiness within the least legal framework.
Note that I am not denying the necessity of a legal framework.
We need clear and cohesive laws and proper enforcement to create some sense of safety from violence.
The dose, the question as to how much rules and laws are too much and a government overreach, that is the real problem here.
As a trained physician, let me say this: "The Dose Makes The Poison" - Paracelsus
I would argue that this does not only apply to medicine. You be the judge.
We also should realize that the purpose of law enforcement shouldn't be punishment, but to keep the majority of reasonable citizens, who create, uphold and follow reasonable laws, safe from violent offenders that threaten their life, health and personal possessions.
Mental health is important, but can never be protected by any human laws without the grave danger of government overreach or even dictatorship.
Instead of prohibiting and punishing any speech or words that may offend another human (or "harm" or "hurt" their mental health), we need to help people to become resilient and not get so easily offended - by being self-aware, having strong but flexible boundaries and valuing themselves.
As people, we need to learn instead (and teach our children) that we can turn off the cell phone, radio, TV, or that we have the power to get out of the physical space or online space of people that we feel have a negative effect on us.
The goal of our education system, healthcare systems or governments should be to teach basic knowledge and skills and train young people to become mentally and physically resilient and confidently follow their interests, curiosity and passions so they can create a better world for the future generations.
It does not make sense and is dangerous to censor and pay off the media in a so-called attempt to protect young people or anyone from online harm. (Come on, folks, just switch off the darn devices...)
How Can We Help this Need to Recover Your Sparkle?
The same way that we need to "harden" young plant seedlings to the harsh effects of sunlight, wind, rain and temperatures outdoors, the same way should parents and education system prepare human "seedlings", aka children, for the harsh reality they will face once they reach maturity.
- Look to nature and take your cues (and most cures) from there.
- Use less words and more deeds and above all – care for each other.
- Forgive each other.
- Dare to apologize and accept apologies.
- Dare to connect and embrace.
- LOVE and respect each other.
So many people have been damaged, traumatized and numbed down by harsh life events, overwhelm, long-term stress and conflicting information.
Combined with a degradation of culture and loss of a coherent value system, we all were and are more and more deprived of the most basic of energetic life forces: LOVE and Care.
As humans, we need more than government-regulated "treatment".
We are not defective, whatever our labels may say that so-called healthcare providers slap on us.
The Death of our Soul demands a new and integrated treatment to nourish the soul instead of "just" the body and even the mind or psyche.
What we really need, is a way to integrate our life experiences, good or bad, into a coherent value system, a structure that makes life more simple and relieves the stress of having to constantly learn and adapt to meaningless rules and changes, demands of government and other people and to conform to meaningless and senseless rules.
The overgrowth of bureaucracy, government overreach and more led to widespread corruption.
As individuals, we feel more and more powerless and helpless, like hamsters in wheel, like rats trapped in a cage.
And this wheel is spinning faster and faster, until we drop out numb, sick or even dead.
And the first thing to wither away and die is our soul.
Just look around us, look at the people around you, the people walking on the street.
How many of them walk with a spring in their step, a sparkle in their eye?
Where can you still see the life energy?
Even children, that used to sparkle the most, are now walking around like zombies, withering away, dependent on their electronic devices, often medicated with psychiatric drugs that numb their feelings, stunt their emotional growth and are known to have harmful side effects in the long term.
Our life energy is being drained by our "modern" lifestyle, by over-medicating (and thus often arresting) personal growth, by a multitude of distractions and by re-labeling "the dark night of the soul" and mental crises "mental illness" that is "treated" by government-approved "professionals" that are part of the rat-race for money that seems to many more important than anything else, especially than LOVE and human-to human connection.
We are told to not get involved, to let "the professionals" handle that...
Really?
We need to stop asking why this happens. We need to stop just thinking about how bad it is, complaining about our circumstances and about anything else around us...
To everyone who can still think, the reason why things are like they are is obvious. Te bible calls it mammon, greed, evil, lust for power.
Without intervention, our western civilization will die.
And maybe it is already too late.
As a hopeless optimist I declare that we suffered enough.
NOW is the time for Positive ACTION.
Maybe as individuals we can not do much.
What Can We Do to Recover Your Sparkle?
And yes, we cannot change others.
But we all can change one person, one attitude, one mind:
Our own.
- We can integrate our different narratives, the words we call ourselves and others, the way we label ourselves and our fellow humans and the world around us.
- We can stop listening to forces which tell us that they know better than us.
- We can consciously tune out distractions, tune out the TV and create space – and then our soul will start singing again, will start singing its uniquely human and wondrous tune.
- We can start to listen again – to our inner voice, to our inner knowing what is right and good.
This is what the bible calls the holy spirit, that part of ourselves where we are part of and connected with a higher spirit, no matter which of the many world religions you practice or if you ever adhere to any of them.
- Look beyond the words to the MEANING.
- Set the intention to create and spread positive energy – LOVE.
- FEEL intuitively what is right and good.
- DO what we feel and know is right and good.
There is no government, religion or society that can "give" you moral norms and values.
Once you reach adulthood, once you reach maturity, you need to make your own decision on what is right for you and good for others and then go forward without fear and at least try to do as much good as you can.
You are much more powerful than you think.
We here at DocChristine want to empower you and help you and others to recover your sparkle.
Our new way of empowerment treatment fuses, combines and aligns all the goodness of existing treatments of the ages, talk therapy, touch therapy, movement therapies, mindfulness therapies and sound therapies and attempts integrate them into our individual and collective life.
In the end, there is no ONE therapy, treatment or modality that works for everyone.
What DOES work is empowering every single one of us to "Recover Your Sparkle", to create their own value systems and create their own life strategy, and courageously pursue their own way towards happiness, integrated in a philosophy of goodness, kindness, love, care, forgiveness and support for each individual without relinquishing self-reliance and responsibility to self and others.
This treatment attempts to combine and simplify as many other modalities as possible, and fuse all that I personally learned and studied in my so far 63 years of life.
I call on all elders to step up to the plate, take the responsibility of our senior age, to heal ourselves and take care of others instead of complaining, retiring to useless existence and vilifying others and what's going on in the world.
FUSION - A New Approach to Satisfy the Need to Recover Your Sparkle
In this article, and more to follow, I will detail a new approach to treatment.
It has been there and known to humans who cared to look it for thousands of years.
For lack of a better word, I call this approach FUSION.
FUSION is a permission-based body-mind-soul integration treatment, intending to stand as an alternative to the hair-splitting specialization of medicine and even psychological treatments.
FUSION practitioners are using a combination of caring therapeutic touch (e.g. Havening Touch®), healing nutrition, nutritional supplements, mindful movement like QiGong, Yoga or TaiChi, radiating loving energy, and attentive listening and responding - to attempt to guide and help others to reach a state of living where healing is possible.
FUSION is inherently very flexible, as other treatment modalities can be added as needed an desired by the client or patient.
FUSION is inherently passive as we observe and listen more than we talk and act, but also inherently active, as we touch, transfer energy and take the leadership role to guide another human's lost or dying soul out of the dead sea back into life, and then relinquish this leadership when the other person is ready to take over for themselves and maybe even lead others.
It sounds difficult, but it is really simple.
We can see FUSION as a way to use a multitude of healing modalities to empower others to become the parent they wish they had (but didn't), to become their own best friend.
Ideally, your clients may want to use you, the practitioner, as a role model, as a person to look up to, feel safe with and be led to the safe haven in their time of trouble on their path to become a person and maybe even to also become a soulful leader of others.
For most people suffering from mental or life anguish, fear, guilt, shame, anxiety or depression, and also from many so-called "physical illnesses", what they really need is not just medication or talk therapy.
What people need is to feel alive again, to "Recover Your Sparkle". They need what I have named FUSION treatment.
Looing back through history, and learning from my own knowledge, experience, I realized that only a skilled combination of permission-based techniques and treatment modalities, that are targeting, fusing and integrating all senses will allow others to recover their sparkle.
One modality by itself will never be enough.
Only this combination, this fusion, will guide them along the path from the death or paralysis of their soul to being fully alive and feeling vibrant and content, prepared and ready to tackle life's many challenges.
Where are you on life's path?
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