S2 EP98 – How To Be a Spiritual Flashlight in the Face of Suffering
Episode Summary:
In this episode of the Inner Bonding Podcast, Dr. Margaret Paul says that in the face of great suffering, such as the war in Ukraine, it doesn’t help to take on the suffering of other people. She continues that what does help is becoming a spiritual flashlight, which she explains further in detail in the podcast. She also shares the concept of collective consciousness and the hundredth monkey theory where once a number of people or animals learn a certain behavior or think a certain thing, suddenly more and more people are thinking or doing this thing. When we’re aware that we can be the person to tip consciousness, we can focus on being a spiritual flashlight that shines a light on others. Dr. Margaret also explains the differences between operating from the left side and the right side of the brain, and how it’s affecting what’s happening in the world.
Episode Transcript:
Hi everyone. This is Dr. Margaret Paul with the Inner Bonding podcast, and today I want to talk about how to become a spiritual flashlight in the face of suffering and how to be empathic and compassionate without taking on the suffering of what’s going on in our world.
A long time ago I learned to not take on the painful feelings of my clients. I feel empathy and compassion for their feelings in my heart, and then let their painful feelings move through me and I give them to God. Before I learned to do this, I would get very depleted in my work with clients.
But when Putin attacked the Ukraine, I started to take on the suffering of the people and this was keeping me up at night. I could see that Dr. Erika Chopich, the co-creator of Inner Bonding and my Golden Girl best friend, wasn’t doing the same thing, so I asked her what she was doing.
She said that instead of taking in the pain of the people in the Ukraine, she was sending them her love and light through her prayers. She said that it doesn’t help anybody to take on their pain, and that what does help is to become what she calls being a spiritual flashlight. Here is what she says she does when she hears about something that is painful, like what’s happening in the Ukraine or the recent fires in Boulder, CO, which is near where we live, or any suffering in the world.
She said:
“I focus God’s love into a light and focus that love, that heart light, like the light that comes from ET’s heart, on that darkness, whether it’s pain or aggression or abandonment, and I add my being to the collective consciousness to raise the frequency of where the problem is to help heal, to remind people they’re still loved, and that God is Love.”
Before I go on to share more of what Erika said, I want to address the concept of collective consciousness. There is a theory called the 100th monkey theory, where once a number of people or animals learn a certain behavior or think a certain thing, suddenly more and more people are thinking or doing this thing. There has been research where they trained a dog to do a trick that no dog ever did, and it took about a year. Then they trained another dog, in a completely different location, to do the same trick, and it took six months. Then another dog and it took 3 months, because the information was in the collective consciousness. Larry Dossey, MD, wrote about this in his wonderful book, One Mind.
Erika went on to say, “I figured this out in my master’s program when I read about the 100th monkey theory about collective consciousness, and I realized that I was part of the collective consciousness and could be the 100th monkey – the person to tip consciousness, and any of us could be the 100th monkey. We don’t know which one of us that is. That’s why I listen to the news and look for where to shine my beam. If I’m focused on being a flashlight, I’m also not taking it in on that deep level where it disturbs me. You can’t be a breath out in a breath in at the same time – you choose.”
I asked her how she would describe a breath in, and she said, “My breath in is my love of nature and the people I love. It’s the beauty I see around me. It’s in the laughter and the lightness of being. Then I transform that into my beam, my being a flashlight, and that’s my breath out.”
“That’s the difference between left brain and right brain. Left brain – they want to do something, they’ve got to fix it, but a right brain person will work to heal it, and that’s a very different aspect to who we are. Left brain people will get frustrated and say, ‘there’s nothing I can do about what’s going on in the Ukraine.’ If you’re a left-brain person, you’ll believe that. If you’re also a right brain person, you’ll say, ‘wait a minute. There’s something I can do. I can shine my beam right in there and if I’m the 100th monkey I can help tip that into something healing.’ That’s why I don’t get frustrated.”
“That’s why we have this darkness – to learn to shine your light. The light comes from God – it is love that is God.
“It’s your lightness of being that keeps your batteries charged so you can be the flashlight. I keep my lightness of being by how I use my sense of humor all day long, how I try to see the humor in life, how much the animals make me laugh. Laughter, making others laugh with my puns.”
Erika indeed has an incredible sense of humor and is brilliant in making others laugh.
Some of you might be familiar with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She wrote a bestselling book called My Stroke of Insight about a devastating stroke in her left brain that she had when she was 37 years old. She knew she was having a stroke because she is a neuroanatomist. Fortunately, she was able to get herself to the hospital, but it took her eight years to fully get her left brain back online. Jill, who is a recent friend of mine, was not a spiritual person before her stroke, but when her left brain went offline, her right brain took over and she found that she could leave her body and float around the universe. One of the things that she talks about in My Stroke of Insight is how huge the soul is, way too huge to fit inside the body, and so just a part of it is in the body and the rest of it is all around the body. Jill has written a recent book which I hope you all read, called Whole Brain Living. After reading this new book, I spoke to her about the fact that the parts of ourselves that we describe in Inner Bonding exactly correlate with what she has discovered about the four parts of the brain and how they function.
She calls the upper left-brain ‘character one,’ and we call it the masculine action aspect of the adult. She calls the lower left-brain ‘character 2,’ and she describes it as the ego, and we call this aspect the ego wounded self. She calls the lower right brain ‘character 3’ and describes this as our true self, our soul self, which we also describe as our true soul self, our inner child. She describes the upper right brain as ‘character 4,’ and she has discovered that this part of the brain is naturally able to access our higher soul, the part of our soul that’s around the body. And in Inner Bonding we call this part of the brain the feminine aspect of the loving adult, and we also talk about that is the aspect of us that can open to learning with our higher guidance. She also describes this part of the brain as being able to nurture the lower right brain, our inner child. When I spoke to her about all this she said, “Wow! You discovered 37 years ago what we have now proven with neuroscience.”
Understanding how the brain works is vitally important, especially today with all the challenges that we have. Many of today’s problems come from when the ego wounded self, the lower left brain, is in charge, and the actions of the upper left brain are being informed by the lower left brain. These actions are being informed by fear and false beliefs, and by a need for power and control over others. Our wounded self believes that our safety is in controlling others, rather than in loving ourselves and sharing our love with other.
When the upper right brain is in control, the part of our brain that can access our higher source of love and truth, then our actions, the actions of the upper left brain, are being informed by our source of love and truth. These actions have nothing to do with trying to control others.
it seems to me as I look around the world, that the cultures that are authoritarian, the countries that have a dictator, a tyrant, a despot, in charge wanting to control, operate primarily from their lower left brain, their ego wounded self, and the actions are coming from their desire to control. it seems to me that certain cultures are more left brain rather than whole brain. Those cultures that don’t have a strong spiritual connection seem to not have access the love and truth of their higher guidance. They may have religion, but their religion seems to be based on control rather than on love.
Those cultures that seem to be more whole brain, such as indigenous cultures that are connected to the earth and to spirit, are often less aggressive and more peace loving.
This has created a big problem on our planet. When the settlers of the United States went to Africa and kidnapped the Black people and brought them here as slaves, those Black people had a strong spirituality, but they were not equipped to fight. So left brain cultures have been able to dominate and control those cultures that are not dominated by their left-brain ego wounded self.
When I have worked with Black people and indigenous people from around the world, I’ve always been blown away by their deep ancient wisdom, a wisdom that we desperately need right now on our planet. They seem to have a natural ability to access a higher source of truth and wisdom that might have been passed down to them through many generations. It’s so deeply heartbreaking to me that the more left-brain people don’t recognize the value of living in a more whole brain way.
The people who have been oppressed, such as women, gay people, and people of color seemed to me to often be more whole brain people, and therefore obviously less aggressive and more easily dominated. Therefore, it’s been easy for the patriarchal authoritarian men to dominate women, indigenous people, or anyone who threatens them in any way.
When I think about whole brain people who have been shining examples of love and wisdom, I think about the Dalai Lama who lost so much, whose people were slaughtered and he had to leave the country, yet he never gave up his love, his peace, and his deep kindness. In the face of all he’s been through, he still teaches loving kindness.
And I think about Nelson Mandela. My friend Lynne Twist, best-selling author of the fantastic book, The Soul of Money, a philanthropist, and role model of love and caring, told this story on a webinar in which she was talking about her new book that is coming out later this year, Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself. Lynne was in South Africa when Nelson Mandela became the first president of South Africa. On the stage with him were two dignitaries and he asked them to step aside, and he called up the two men who were his jailers and who tortured him for 27 years. He apologized to them for hating them for the first 17 years of his incarceration, and then he told him he realized that they were just as trapped as he was in having to do what they did to him. As he asked them to accept his apology, these ruddy white men started to cry, and asked for his forgiveness. Amazing! Nelson Mandela was a shining example of whole brain living, and he was able to maintain his connection to his source of love even through 27 years of torture and incarceration. We have much to learn from men like the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, neither of whom are nor were, controlling, dominating patriarchs. In fact, I was on a special webinar with the Dalai Lama, and he said that it’s time for women to take over our planet – that women will likely do a much better job than men have done. Obviously, The Dalai Lama isn’t threatened by women as are the male dictators of our world.
It seems to me that authoritarian countries like Russia and China are left brain countries. Nazi Germany was left brain and now it is balanced and whole brain. Other more democratic nations, such as Italy and France, are also more balanced, more whole brain. The Bidens and the Obamas seems to me to be very balanced in their thinking and actions. Some countries, such as Iran, were very balanced and highly creative before being taken over by an authoritarian patriarchal leader. The Scandinavian countries are quite balanced. The ancient Greeks gave us democracy and so much beauty regarding art. The people who operate in a whole brain way are far more creative than people who operate primarily in their left brain.
Authoritarian cultures with left-brain patriarchal leaders oppress women, education, minorities, people of different religions, the arts, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and individual achievement. They seem to be deeply threatened by all of this. And this is typical of the behavior coming from the ego – the lower left brain.
Think about what part of your brain informs most of your behavior. Are you operating primarily from your lower left brain, your wounded self, the part of you that operates from fear and false beliefs and whose intention is primarily to control getting love and avoiding pain and who has a need to be right and to dominate? Is your lower right brain, your inner child, lacking the nurturing that you need and feeling alone and abandoned because the actions of your upper left brain are coming from control rather than from love? Or is your intention to learn, which activates your upper right brain and opens you to connection with your higher soul, and with what’s loving and true for you, and are you bringing love inside to your beautiful soul?
This of course is what Inner Bonding is all about. At this time, our planet desperately needs people to be developing whole brain living rather than operating primarily from their left brain. A whole brain person would never attack another country in the way that Putin has. The whole brain person would never want to dominate and control and exert power over others in the way that dictators do, and in the way that people who are against democracy do.
I think it’s time to redefine power and to look at the vast difference between the attempt to have power over others, which is what the ego wounded self does, and the personal power that comes from the true strength of a spiritually connected loving adult. When you’re operating as a loving adult and your upper left-brain actions are being informed by your upper right brain, rather than by your lower left brain, you come from true strength. True strength has nothing to do with power over others and the desire to dominate and control. This kind of power indicates deep weakness, deep fear, deep insecurity. Whole brain people, such as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, people who are spiritually connected to their source of love and truth, do not need to dominate and control to prove themselves. In fact, they have no need at all to prove themselves.
Don’t you think it’s time now for all of us to focus on developing our spiritually connected right brain so that our actions are being informed by love rather than by the fear that leads to domination and controlling behavior?
It seems to me that all the current problems in our society – the racism, sexism, the economic imbalance, the food insecurity, homelessness, the climate crisis, violence, disinformation, anti-Semitism, are all coming from the deep inner fear and insecurity of the people who are inflicting violence on others. Perhaps it’s time for people to learn to embrace their true selves, the beautiful soul within them that is a spark of the divine and learn to nurture and express the gifts of our beautiful soul – to do what we came here on this planet to do, which is to evolve in our ability to love, not to dominate.
And I think that it’s time for everyone to understand our oneness, to understand that we are all a part of the whole, we are all a part of the divine. That gender and race are only external qualities that we can learn to cherish. That different cultures all have something to offer us when we open to learning with each other and recognize our oneness with each other.
Our planet is in deep trouble due to climate change. Indigenous people whose lands we stole to clear cut and put in factory farms and mono crops, which destroyed the land, know exactly how to bring our planet back into balance. They kept our planet in balance for thousands of years until we stole their lands and decimated them. Isn’t it time that we recognize that the people whose lands we stole and decimated have the information we need to save our planet?
Our planet is out of balance because we are out of balance. We have robbed our planet and created a toxic environment, just as we create a toxic inner environment when we operate just from our left brain rather than our whole brain. The many illnesses we suffer from as well as COVID come from this imbalance. The imbalance within reflects the imbalance on our planet, and the imbalance on our planet reflects the imbalance within.
The way out of all this is to create inner balance so that we can create outer balance. We need to listen to the very people who left brain societies have looked down on as not being good enough or smart enough. It’s time to recognize that our left-brain cultures have failed. It’s time to recognize that we need the more right brain information that the people we have shunned have. Many of the women, many of the Black people, and many of the indigenous people have the knowledge that we now need, and I hope that the arrogant, dominating, controlling patriarchal left-brain, people recognize that they are failing society. They are failing humans. They are failing our planet and that it’s time to open to learning from those who have the knowledge that we need.
Our schools have mostly focused on subjects such as math and science, cutting out many of the classes that develop the creativity of the right brain. This has been a huge mistake. I hope that our schools will soon recognize the need for developing the whole brain, not just the left brain.
I have found through my 37 years of my devoted Inner Bonding practice who this process has created inner balance for me and for the many people that I’ve worked with. This powerful 6-step roadmap creates whole brain balance and balance within our bodies as we learn to access the love and truth that can guide us in healing ourselves, healing our relationships, healing our society, and healing our planet.
I encourage all of you who are listening to develop a consistent Inner Bonding practice so that you can develop the new neural pathways in your higher brain for becoming a loving adult and develop the new neural pathways that allow you to access your higher source of love and truth. As neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor has discovered, our right brain naturally knows how to access our higher guidance, but our society has not fostered this. Our left-brain society has focused on attaining knowledge rather than on higher knowing. It’s focused on external learning rather than tapping into the vast information of the universe.
While I love to read, being able to access direct knowing through my spiritual connection is what creates inner balance. Everyone has this capacity and hope for your sake and the sake of our society and our planet that you learn to create this inner balance.
I hope you join me in my 30-day video course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom, to learn to connect with your spiritual Guidance.
And you can learn so much about creating balance from recent books: The Inner Bonding Workbook: Six Steps to Healing Yourself and Connecting With Your Divine Guidance, Diet for Divine Connection: Beyond Junk Foods and Junk Thoughts to At-Will Spiritual Connection, and 6 Steps to Total Self-Healing: The Inner Bonding Process.
And, of course, we have much to offer you at our website at https:www.innerbonding.com.
I’m sending you my love and my blessings.
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