The Yin-Yang of Life

I heard the loud thud of the bird hitting the windshield; then saw it bounce off and fall onto the gravel roadside, as the car continued on its way. Walking along the opposite side, I next ran across the road to check whether the bird was only stunned.

Dropping onto my knees beside it, I spoke softly, giving reassurance not to be afraid. The bird lay on its back, chest heaving up and down, and beak open as if gasping for air. I gently placed my hands over the bird, close but not touching, palms down while delicately moving my fingers along the length of its body from head to feet.

I was applying therapeutic touch (T.T.), a type of healing modality in which the healer’s hands move over the energy field of the body, to calm the recipient and reduce physical pain. Some individuals trained in T.T., in fact, do treat animals in distress as well as humans.

But survival was not to be for this beautiful little bird. So I prayed for its spirit now to rest in peace after as little suffering as possible, as I always do whenever I am driving and see animal or bird life snuffed out by drivers. In a cradle of field grass I relocated the bird farther away from the road’s shoulder, so that it would not suffer further indignities from oblivious drivers.

Life is so precious, so uncertain, so fleeting. Once we lose someone or something that had provided meaning to our own existence, where do we turn for solace? The loss could be a loved one, a close friend, our own physical or mental health, or a livelihood or vocation that had filled our days with security and purpose, or all of the above.

Three times, thus far, my personal and professional worlds together have totally fallen apart. Each crisis tossed me, rather unceremoniously, onto new and unfamiliar terrain. Once more I had to figure out not just how to survive yet, more importantly, explore processes to make meaning from life’s traumas and grow closer to spiritual wholeness.

Indeed, a perennial truth is, the way we are tested does not reside in the circumstances that befall us but, more precisely, how we respond to the circumstances.

Acknowledgment of the wisdom that is passed down through the ages, to influence our own accomplishments, is expressed by saying that we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. I characterize that wisdom more humbly, believing that I am being held in the arms of those beautiful souls whose stories of steadfastness and bravery I recall to lift any fog of darkness that, at times, obscures the path forward.

The reason is, at those moments of wandering toward an abyss, or standing at the edge, the personal narratives of people who have confronted, and transcended, enormous tests – whether provided from the external world or from their own inner demons – always have fortified me.

That is why paying attention to people’s stories is so vital, to deepen and expand our consciousness and our compassion for all beings. The stories that we choose – to reflect upon, to create and/or to tell each other – are what render us distinctive from all other species on Earth. Even so, we as humans ought not to feel superior for that reason. The reality, in fact, ought to humble us.

I recall the wisdom of Art Solomon, an Anishinabe elder who was a spiritual mentor to me many years ago. He expressed how humans are the only beings who forgot their `original instructions’ from the Creator about how to live in this Creation with respect and love. All other earthly species, and the elements, live in accordance with the laws of Nature.

Recognition of the laws of Nature means squarely facing the yin-yang of existence. We do so by learning how to negotiate the light and the darkness in the material that life presents to us, at all levels, from our personal lives to workplace, community, nation state and globally – in both human and planetary interrelationships.

What my own journey has taught me could fill a book (which I hope to publish in the future). The experiential learning skills, added to the academic knowledge and psychological training that I pursued, all contribute to what I can offer today, to help other people through teaching, workshops and individual mentoring services.

To sum up, for this blog, what sustains me daily is the following. Wherever I am (at home or on the road), I exercise kindness, recognize the sacredness of all life, treat my own body with respect, be consciously grateful for something, glean a new piece of knowledge, and keep informed about events in the larger world, with full awareness about how my well-being is interwoven with all life on the planet. As well – and very pertinent to living in a world out of balance – is the conscious enhancement of my own inner equilibrium by paying attention to aspects of beauty and joy, within and around me at serendipitous moments, that feed my soul – again, as a daily practice.

Note that those practices identify not “more things to do” during a day that already could be full. They instead identify a state of consciousness in how to move through the day, in relation with whatever domestic, neighbourly or professional responsibilities are happening. Meanwhile, I do not assume that I have “arrived” at any destination. My inner and outer journeys continue, respectively, toward fuller understanding, and being more effective in how I engage in the larger world, as long as I have breath on this physical plane of existence.

Regardless, I have come a long way to live a more balanced life today than formerly, during many years of workaholism and focusing all of my energy toward changing a troubled world while neglecting my own emotional and physical health. Those are common unhealthy patterns, by the way, among many helping professionals and activists.

Our own stories are ever evolving. When life falls apart offers content for one chapter or more in a book of life that remains open. We simply are called to turn the page onto a new chapter yet to be realized. Later, we even may decide to rewrite, at least on our heart, how we framed earlier chapters. The choice is ours.

The multi-faceted intention of my professional work is to raise awareness about the world around us, provide insights for us to understand how life functions holistically, and awaken the recognition within each person how each and every one of us can make a difference in the world.

To interconnect, in my blogs, what is professional with what is personal expresses a holistic philosophy about how life authentically engages not just the mind yet, moreover, the heart, the body and the soul.

Consider that a growing number of people seem to be developing dependencies on technologies to get through the day, while forfeiting person-to-person interactions that enable us to become more fully human through emotional and spiritual growth. (Please see my February blog titled “Giving Presence as an Expression of Love.”)

How we function in our working lives always has been influenced by personal values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that, today, in addition, are being influenced by our applications of technology throughout the day. Meanwhile, another fact, not as easily recognized, is how a person’s `unconscious’ responses to life experiences profoundly influence choices and types of interactions, whether human or technological.

That fact is why we see business news articles today about psychology in the workplace. Also, a growing number of companies recognize the practical benefit of workshops for employees, sometimes including employers too, that focus on developing a range of skills from personal mastery to building team relationships, that is, social skills, to improve the collective production and services of the business.

To include those of you who are not working though, a crucial question comes to mind for everyone: “How do we make meaning of our lives, regardless of the presence or absence of paid work?” This question is critical today, among a large number of people, across generations, who need income yet who either cannot find employment and/or have lost employment that had provided a purpose in life as well as income.

How do we negotiate life’s disappointments? How do we maintain a sense of equilibrium when we experience a professional, and personal, life that has no certainty? How do we retain hope, rather than drown in despair, while existing in a world that experiences widening chaos, economically, environmentally and politically?

All of those existential questions are the fuel that drives the content of my blogs and why I feel so strongly that simply being alive at this historic moment calls upon us to develop our consciousness. What creative processes can we practice to help us reflect on how we make meaning of our present circumstances? Alternatively, what resources could we develop within us, emotionally and spiritually, to survive and function creatively, given the possibility of losing someone or something we depend on, externally?

Although I seldom write as a journalist anymore, I do have the deepest respect for those investigative journalists who take risks, sometimes life-threatening, to tell us about critical events, and the consequences, so that the rest of us can take action to challenge injustice. Those journalists have an important role, often under-appreciated, to be messengers about realities we otherwise would not be aware of. In doing so, they fight for freedom of expression that some people take too much for granted.

The limitation of news reporting, however, is that stories are chosen according to peak moments of dramatic conflict and crisis, in disconnected units of events, soon left behind and replaced with the next conflict or crisis. That emphasis, unfortunately, short-changes, and distorts, the continuity of everyday life around the planet, in which thousands of human beings are confronting adversity with supreme bravery, helping others, and applying strategies to survive that the rest of us could learn from.

Personal narrative is another storytelling form, with an emphasis different from hard news, to address the breadth and depth of the human condition, although similarly using specific events at a particular moment in time at a particular location. Such narratives illuminate realities that are timeless and universal. My previous two blogs, for example, focused on naming – yet also suggested how to challenge, and the reasons why – the fear and discrimination in Arizona that represent a spreading, dangerous political direction.

In recent decades, the practices of `personal narrative’ writing and other `expressive arts’ have been transformative learning components of teacher training in some teachers’ colleges. These practices are incorporated as well in other helping professions, not just to train the helpers, yet also to benefit clients, patients and interested life-long learners.

The highest purpose in storytelling is not merely to entertain, nor even to inform. It is, moreover, to elevate and inspire us to make meaning of what befalls us so that, ultimately, we can transcend whatever fears and other obstacles we confront, whether within or externally.

In that spirit, I sincerely hope my narrative approach in blogging provides material for meaningful reflection.

How a human being experiences the physicality of the land might be compared with how s/he welcomes and values the diversity of the human family. Consider the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, for example, which I physically experienced several years ago during a day long drive across it, with interludes of short walks. At dusk, my friend and I sat on a bench in a desert oasis to watch one of the most glorious sunsets of my life, as the sun dipped behind the mountains in the distance.

Yet some travellers might experience the desert as a dry, barren land that is alien and threatening, through eyes that only see flat, parched earth disrupted by the spines of various cacti. Fear, of snakes, scorpions, and whatever else is not immediately visible and familiar, overtakes any willingness to be adventurous and take the time to be exposed to the less visible, unfamiliar and transformative encounters that can be possible through direct physical connection with the earth.

Other travellers defuse fear with an open mind and a receptive heart. In doing so, they expose themselves to a direct experience of the beauty, diversity, and resilience, of a very rich desert ecology that survives for reasons of flexibility and adaptability, in constant harsh conditions as well as during extreme environmental events.

The above two perspectives could be equated to how various Euro-Americans choose to look upon diverse human cultures. Some of the former have a one-dimensional and unwelcoming view, for example, as evident by those Euro-American individuals in Arizona who view the growing number of Latino/a residents with fear.

Other Euro-Americans, although socialized in Western culture, allow their lives to become enriched by exploring, and engaging with, cultures other than their own. In making that effort they thus awaken awareness about the inner beauty and strengths of resilient Latino and Native American peoples. Indeed, traditional land-based cultures, despite colonial disruptions, continue to model a spiritually-grounded value system connected with the earth that Euro-western culture would do well to heed.

That is why the fear-mongering by extreme right-wing politicians in Arizona, who have banned Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, used in Mexican American Studies (MAS), is so misguided, not to mention banning other books and terminating the MAS program. (See my previous blog.)

Politicians, such as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, stigmatize Friere – a world-renown Brazilian critical educator – as a Marxist, and insult MAS students by suggesting the latter are being indoctrinated. This accusation shows those politicians’ ignorance, to censor educational materials that actually are teaching people not what to think but instead how to think independently. Such politicians are the actual perpetrators of ideological bias, not the MAS and other, still existing ethnic studies programs.

Indeed, Paulo Friere’s intention was to create processes to help learners take responsibility in understanding how regimes of power influence their lives. Called `conscientization,’ that is, coming to consciousness, is the first step. Thereafter, better informed individuals can feel transformed, engaged and more in charge of their lives, to make better choices for the benefit of the wider community or society.

Friere’s critical pedagogy, in fact, challenged indoctrination and what he called the `banking’ concept of education. `Banking’ refers to the transmission style of education where the teacher is the active agent, the one who knows, and students are the passive recipients of the teacher’s knowledge. For anyone who wants to examine Friere’s influence on educational theory and practice, and read critiques of his work, go to http://mingo.info-science.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/linksfreire.htm.

What right-wing politicians confuse, and wrongly conflate, is the longstanding American bogeyman of state communism with the traditional Indigenous, Latino and other non-Western societal values that are communal.

Communal values call upon interactions that are inclusively beneficial to all community members. Such inclusion is not limited to human beings but, moreover, to human responsibilities toward, and interrelationships with, the communities of all forms of life. These include land-based and marine plant and animal life, as well as the elements of earth, air, fire and water.

That raises a related problem of the cultural racism exercised against ethnic studies in Arizona by its current Attorney-General Tom Horne. In his previous function as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, he lobbied to bring in House Bill 2281, created to use against academic studies designed for particular ethnic groups. That problem is the Euro-American obsession with `individualism,’ as per the United States’ `melting pot’ (in contrast with Canada’s `mosaic’) preference in relation to diverse cultures.

In an interview with CNN‘s Anderson Cooper at that time, Tom Horne cited Martin Luther King, Jr., from his 1963 civil rights march speech: “We should be judged by the qualities of our character and not the colour of our skin.” Horne followed with: “We are individuals, and not exemplars of the race we belong to,” to justify the above house bill.

CNN co-interviewee, sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson at Georgetown University, then reprimanded Horne for dismissing “negative realities” experienced by peoples who have been “demoralized and degraded” in regard to their histories. Dyson added that until such time all Americans can address and take ownership of such realities, ethnic studies are needed.

Meanwhile, it could be argued that state communism and state capitalism are two sides of the same coin given their similar pursuits in the economic exploitation of the natural world, to the degree of undermining the planet’s life support system.

The bigger threat to Western civilization, therefore, is absolutely not ethnic cultures whose traditional communal values include socializing each and every child to take responsibility in caring for the sources of life that sustain them. Rather, the current threat to any civilization, and human life worth living at all, is the increasing destruction inflicted upon the planet globally by multinational industrial capitalism.

As American businessman and environmentalist Paul Hawken cautioned in his book The Ecology of Commerce (1993): “We have reached an unsettling and portentious turning point in industrial civilization [p. 1] … Quite simply, our business practices are destroying life on earth. Given current corporate practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global market economy. We know that every natural system on the planet is disintegrating” [p. 3].

My own experiences among Indigenous people influenced my professional approach in media literacy and also my academic studies in transformative learning. Media literacy, in a nutshell, embraces a set of concepts and practices that examine how, why, and for whom, the media construct reality. Also called `media studies’ and `media education,’ it is taught at various grade levels from elementary to post-secondary institutions in many countries around the world today, including the United States.

Media education teaches `critical thinking,’ most commonly to scrutinize the mass media and popular culture. Media, however, embrace all forms of `cultural production,’ which also include all fields of academic knowledge from natural and social sciences to economics and history. In other words, all expressions of knowledge are culturally constructed rather than absolute truths. Therein is the reason why any approach in critical thinking, Frierian or otherwise, can be seen not only as provocative to political and economic power holders, but also threatening to the status quo.

Regardless, a secure and healthy democracy thrives on freedom of expression by all voices rather than censorship. Also important is learning how to `deconstruct’ the spreading tentacles of American right-wing fear-mongering and, instead, encourage culturally diverse learning materials in more schools.

`Deconstruction’ is one of the media education practices that I have demonstrated above, to expose Huppenthal’s distorted characterization of Friere and MAS, and Horne’s misrepresentation of a statement from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 speech.

`Deconstruct’ means to analyze a text, linguistic or conceptual system, in order to expose its hidden internal assumptions and contradictions, and subvert its apparent significance or unity. In other words, I `subverted’ Huppenthal’s interview on Democracy Now, by identifying how his language was politically biased even though he tried to present his position as totally neutral and common sense, implying it to be universally acceptable.

As for Huppenthal’s presentation of the Euro-American approach to education as the only acceptable norm, it is simply `cultural racism,’ also known as `systemic racism’ and `institutional racism.’ Such racism is described by the Women’s Theological Center, in Boston, MA, as: “A situation in which one race maintains supremacy over another race through a set of attitudes, behaviors, social structures and ideologies,” as well as “standards for appropriate behavior [that] are ethnocentric, reflecting and privileging the norms and values of the dominant race/society.”

More than ever before in human history, we truly need to open our minds and hearts to understand cultures other than our own, by exposing ourselves to each others’ stories, whether in books, films, theatrical performances, music and/or through the joy of social gatherings, and personal encounters in which we give presence to each other.

Let us also work side-by-side in restorative activities on behalf of our beloved planet.

I recall a Latino educator telling me that I would be professionally marginalized because of my journalism and media literacy work focused on challenging racism, in all its forms, that targeted Indigenous peoples. Our conversation occurred at a 1999 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, called “Weaving a New Beginning,” organized by the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution. He was correct.

Becoming marginalized, however, already had established itself as my reality, during a considerable span of my life dedicated full time to cross-cultural healing. Little did I know, when embarking on freelance journalism in 1982, that my investigations would unveil cultural racism systemically in every institution, as well as the news media and popular culture throughout mainstream North America.

I certainly lost my intellectual, and cultural, innocence along that road of seeking the truth of what really happened in Canadian and American history – acts of oppression based upon Euro-western worldviews – that continue to cause ruptures in contemporary cross-cultural relations today.

Fighting injustice, and particularly a history of oppression, requires tenacity and a deep conviction to stand up for what is ethical. As a journalist/educator, through the 1990s I was invited to facilitate media literacy workshops around North America, at conferences for teachers, conflict resolution professionals, and fellow journalists, on news media and pop culture stereotypes.

But, despite my deep involvement in Indigenous culture, I was not Indigenous. I therefore was treated as an outsider by many Native people, yet on several levels felt like an outsider as well within my own Euro-western culture, as a Canadian of Celtic ancestry.

Being a foot soldier on the battleground of social justice eventually wore me out. Of necessity, I shifted gears to focus on healing rather than suffering. This emphasis makes all the difference in relation to how we sustain ourselves, by paying attention both to our inner and outer life. We do so through understanding how to maintain health holistically, taking time to reflect on what really matters, and developing our consciousness so that our personality becomes more closely aligned with our soul.

Healing rather than suffering is the wiser path, whether we speak about a journey of personal transformation or global transformation, or the multiple levels in between that embrace reconciliation among the diverse cultures within the human family.

I suggest that cultural healing is at the heart of all ethnic studies programs that exist academically in the United States, and elsewhere. Ethnic studies are totally justifiable and essential on that sole basis. Other good reasons could be added, such as freedom of expression, which one would assume is a given in any democracy, yes? Actually, no.

The very existence of the label “ethnic studies” speaks to the problem. Namely, Euro-western colonial nations, since the 19th century creation of social sciences such as anthropology, henceforth classified the rest of humanity as “ethnic,” to distinguish `them’ from Euro-western culture, which imposed its hegemonic dominance.

Worse, the Tucson book banning in Arizona schools and, moreover, termination of the Tucson Unified School District nationally-acclaimed Mexican American Studies (MAS) program, illustrates that the only worldview still considered acceptable to be taught in schools must be based on a Euro-western trajectory that originates in Graeco-Roman culture.

But, what aspects are glorified, and from what periods? All human cultures continually evolve, in which some periods are more democratic and egalitarian while others clearly are not. Western history overall is not a pretty picture. Consider whose version gets told, and whose voices have been marginalized and/or silenced throughout history.

Yet here we go again. How dare the political and educational authorities in Arizona, or any other American state, have the audacity to continue oppression in the 21st century by trying to repress cultural awareness among the original peoples of North and South America. Their ancestors inhabited these lands thousands of years prior to the arrivals of Europeans! Descendants of mixed ancestry also are carriers of stories that illuminate the cultural complexity and richness, albeit fraught with conflict, of cross-cultural histories.

I have news for those Americans who appear to be socialized into a life of paranoia. It is not global terrorism, nor even any terrorists living among you, that will destroy your democracy. Instead, through xenophobia and ignorance, you are doing a jolly good job of undermining your own democracy. Tea Party supporters most of all make a mockery of democracy, and are the folks to be feared if their candidates gain more power.

How individuals such as John Huppenthal, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Tom Horne, Attorney-General, got elected at all is chilling, not to mention House Bill 2281 getting passed in order to use it to oppress Americans who are ethnic. In watching interviews with Huppenthal and Horne, respectively, by Democracy Now and CNN, how these two men both distort the purpose of MAS and also the perspectives of famous and award-winning authors is very disturbing, as well as Horne invoking the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (In my next blog, I will `deconstruct’ these distortions and more, by demonstrating media literacy as a tool to name and challenge cultural racism.)

Where the hope of an authentically democratic America resides is, first of all, in promoting freedom of expression through the availability of books written in the voices of all cultures and, furthermore, strengthening the presence of ethnic studies for all Americans and new immigrants to enjoy and develop cross-cultural understanding.

On that note, I applaud the solidarity already demonstrated by many American organizations, schools and individuals who are proactively and vocally challenging the cultural racism so virulent in Arizona, and wherever else it exists. For example, browse the long list of organizational supporters published on the website of the National Coalition Against Censorship at http:www.ncac.org/Censorship-Arizona-Style, and read their joint statement opposing the book ban. Also, educational groups across America are holding teach-ins, while a growing number of citizens join in solidarity by using social media for its highest purpose – to challenge all forms of injustice.

Huppenthal’s and Horne’s fear-mongering, and dictating that books cannot be studied that focus on race, oppression and ethnicity, because it victimizes ethnic peoples and makes them resentful towards `white Americans,’ is an insult to any intelligent person. The truth is the opposite, that the study of oppressive histories, however painful, opens two doors, first of all, for the oppressed to take back ownership and cultural pride in revitalizing values, practices, and awareness of their peoples’ under-recognized contributions to the world – to be acknowledged as equal human beings.

The second door opens insights to the root causes of fear and prejudice by the oppressors, as one step toward cross-cultural healing. The only way to resolve any anger and resentment also calls upon all Americans to be exposed to the dark side of their history, followed by the will to engage in reconciliation through cross-cultural dialogues. Such dialogues must be safe and respectful spaces where participants bring an intentionality to listen with good hearts and open minds, rather than be accusatory and/or defensive.

Here are a few links selected from many, to help you find accurate information rather than misinformation. Go to http://saveethnicstudies.org, to see a chronology of events leading up to the termination of MAS, profiles on the educators and information about MAS. Also go to http://rethinkingschoolsblog.wordpress.com to look up several articles in recent months written by Bill Bigelow, co-editor of Rethinking Columbus, one of the banned books.

Finally, go to the blog of Dr. Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, a professor at University of Arizona and one of the banned authors, to read his love message to the world, and related blogs, at http://drcintli.blogspot.com/2012/02/from-ground-zero-in-lak-ech-and-love.html. He communicates the spiritually-grounded worldviews of the Latino and Indigenous peoples – namely, it is love and forgiveness directed at the oppressors rather than the latter’s fear and hate that will facilitate walking the road, as equals, toward reconciliation.

By the way, feeling like an outsider (culturally speaking), as I mentioned earlier, has not bothered me for a long time. The reason is, Indigenous people offered opportunities for me to experience Spirit, and instilled the belief that we all are spiritual beings who come from, and return to, the same cosmic Source, however diverse spiritual paths name it. I find my kindred souls among those fellow human beings who hold the same belief in their hearts.

Tears streamed down her face in the silence that followed. The woman, middle-aged, had just told us that the experience of speaking in this circle of people was the first time in her life she felt the full presence of others genuinely hearing her emotional pain.

An extraordinary statement, wouldn’t you say? How common is this phenomenon? After many years volunteering at a phone-in Distress Centre in a large city, followed by studies and training in psychology, the regrettable answer is – very common. That is why a large number of people seek out the services of psychological and/or spiritual counsellors. Historically, people in despair sought out individuals in spiritual ministry.

Yet, until the later decades of the twentieth century – in an increasingly secularized Euro-western culture – social stigmas were thrust upon individuals who sought out psychiatric help. For those who did, many mental health afflictions were not accurately identified, so that they either were not appropriately treated or were totally overlooked. Worse, people to this day who deserve informed, and compassionate, support still might never receive it, and sometimes take their own lives.

The emotional pain to which I refer in the opening anecdote, however, speaks to a more widespread human dilemma. I am referring to the sense of disconnection within us when our soul is not welcomed in the world. This dilemma may or may not extend to, and include, the more clearly definable severe chemical imbalances that require medical, as well as psycho-therapeutic, interventions.

What I became aware of thirty years ago, working at a Distress Centre, is the prevalence of profound and, at times, life-threatening, human loneliness based upon bad experiences in interrelationships, absence of community and a sense of powerlessness. In fact, I now witness the same losses and human isolation in the rural region where I currently reside.

As far back as the 1950s though, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl referred to the existential vacuum – namely, a lack of meaningfulness in life – that he witnessed in North America. Frankl’s seminal book Man’s Search for Meaning became well-known in academic and psychological circles. In it he spoke from his own experiential knowledge of what inner resources within his own psyche he connected with, to keep his sanity and survive captivity in a Nazi death camp. His book’s content continues to be relevant.

But, the people who choose vocations to help others sometimes neglect their own emotional and spiritual care, and do so unconsciously. This dilemma was addressed more than 25 years ago in Women Who Love Too Much by psychotherapist Robin Norwood, which broke new ground in even naming it. This book – and its sequel inspired by the huge response to her first book – number among many excellent books that I researched, to explore my own patterns as a helping professional, in order to name and transform them.

Acknowledging our inner life is vital for both women and men. Doing so is most imperative among those in helping professions and related callings, who devote so much energy to the welfare of other people. The reason is, during my research through the 1990s, I discovered a disturbing trend. Helping professionals were dropping out of their respective vocations in growing numbers, because of serious, repeated burnout and subsequent physical health problems.

My opening anecdote refers to a circle of helping professionals, who gathered in Toronto in the mid-1990s, to participate in a series of weekend workshops led by American spiritual psychologist Tom Yeomans. Among his transformative activities, Dr. Yeomans trains helping professionals in the concepts and practices of a spiritual psychology called psychosynthesis. It’s approach is focused on facilitating connection with our soul.

What `giving presence’ or `being present’ means, therefore, is much more than merely showing up. It means `witnessing’ and `bearing witness,’ beyond intellectually hearing and presuming to analyze words and body language being spoken. Instead, the essential `active listening’ calls us to open our heart and soul to pay attention to another human soul reaching out for connection.

Indeed, Tom Yeomans points out that the soul not feeling welcomed in the world is one of the most devastating sources of human pain evident today, and it often begins in early childhood. Psychotherapists John Firman and Ann Gila describe this phenomenon in their book The Primal Wound, A Transpersonal View of Trauma, Addiction and Growth (1997). They suggest that the void that occurs from a split in our consciousness is what seeds our collective societal materialism and preoccupations, fed by the mass media, focused on sex, violence, power, control and addictions.

Giving presence, conversely, is a humble and simple act. Some years ago, a friend’s daughter invited me to be present during the home birth of her first child, assisted by a midwife. I sat quietly in the background, and visualized energies of serenity and love, with silent prayers that all will be well. Some days later, Lise thanked me for the strength and reassurance that she had felt me sending her and the baby, energetically. The gift that I received was feeling trusted to participate in welcoming a new soul into this world.

To sum up, giving presence works both ways. We receive what we give. We cannot give unless the potential recipient calls upon us to be present. In other words, we cannot force our affection upon someone unwilling to receive it. The door of another person’s heart needs to be open to receive love. What we then might be asked to give is not whatever expertise we might have to offer but instead, more soulfully, our loving attention.

What we receive can never be anticipated, and may not be realized through words. Rather, it can be based upon us simply having the grace to appreciate the opportunity to express our loving kindness and enhance someone else’s well-being, whether a loved one, a colleague, an acquaintance or a total stranger.