I write these words with a heavy heart. I was out with family yesterday evening when my cousin, visiting from abroad, showed me a video of bloody bodies littering the streets of France. None of us could bear these images; we all looked away. How are ordinary people, shocked and saddened by this atrocity, supposed to react? What are the nations of the world supposed to do? How can we make this better? How can we stop it from happening again?
I am a physician, not a politician. But my daily work treating chronic pain is all about understanding hurt and healing suffering. Most of my patients have many scars, and they don’t just affect their tissues. They have pain in their hearts, and their mental and emotional scars cannot be ignored if we are to work towards long-term healing.
Many people around the world have scars that run very deep. As we become conscious of our power to create change, it is time to admit that the world we have created is a mess. While people are basically good, our words and our actions towards each other are too often guided by fear and anger, greed and desire. In ancient Tibetan medicine, all illness is attributed to the disturbances of the mind that are caused by these basic animal instincts that control the impulses and instincts of the lower mind, the amygdala and brainstem, the fight or flight system. This part of our brains, which evolved for our survival, is leading us to our self-destruction.
The only way forward is forgiveness and love, and an honest commitment to creating a better world. What is needed is not more guns or walls, not another defence or attack. We need a world that people can believe in. A future that we can all work together to create. Most importantly, we need leaders with courage and conviction to focus our minds on solving our problems. This will have to come from the men and women who lead the governments and corporations that actually run the world. But for better or for worse, these people work for us. So it is also up to you.
We should not be surprised by the terror in France. Those who commit acts like this are extreme, they are criminal, they are deviant and they must be stopped. But their feelings of fear and anger, their mindset of us versus them, are not unique to them. Many of us feel the same way about the madness that has gripped mankind for far too long. Polluting the ocean just because we can, ignoring starving children just because we can, selling weapons by the boatload just because we can. These are just an extension of the animal instincts that make us hate, that make us scared, that make us want more than what we need.
Human beings are beautiful creatures. We are blessed with a mind that can focus its awareness on anything it chooses. We can choose to step away from greed and fear. We can connect with the divine within each of us. These things we choose to tune into are vibrations. They are frequencies. Just like radio waves, our mind can tune itself towards brotherhood and love.
We all live on this planet together. We love our children the same. Our need for food and water is the same. Our sense of justice and fairness is the same. Put love in your heart today. Tune into it when you smile at people. Let your vibrations be loving, your thoughts, your words and your deeds be loving. Make this your weapon, and use it to bring love into the world. Let us heal the world together. How should we treat others? There are no others.
Namaste.