Daniel J. Benor, MD   

All appears to change when we change.
                                 - Henri Amiel    

Abstract   

There is fascinating, impressive research evidence suggesting that a collective consciousness exists, linking the consciousness of every individual person into a vast, combined awareness. Meta-analyses confirming telepathy, clairsentience, psychokinesis as components of collective consciousness are of such a high confidence levels that the chances that these results are random occurrences range between less than one in a million to one in ten million billion billion. To a lesser degree, but still impressive, are many individual studies of spiritual healing, with results reaching to probabilities of less than one in a thousand, and a meta-analysis of distant intentional effects on electrodermal responses at a probability of less than one in a billion. If we accept collective consciousness as a fact of our existence, then each of us is like a brain cell in the mind of the All.

The collective consciousness may then offer us various ways to address and heal humanity’s abuses of each other and of our planet, such as wars, carbon emissions that are producing global heating, poor allocations of natural resources, pollution, and other problems. We can do this through shifts in the collective consciousness of humanity and of broader planetary awarenesses – in addition ecological and social programs that address practical aspects of these problems.

As each of us clears the dross of our personal, individual consciousness, we are thereby contributing in a small way to the clearing of the collective consciousness. When I release angers, resentments, hurts and other negative feelings from my personal consciousness, then I am clearing my former negative contributions from the collective consciousness. This article suggests that releases of collective negativity can be markedly enhanced if we set the intention that all our personal releases will simultaneously invite releases of similar negativities from others in the collective consciousness of which we are a part – taking a lesson from Ho'oponopono, which teaches this approach in individual, family and community therapy/healing. These types of releases can clear our inherited consciousness through our family of origin, as well as the consciousness of our families of choice, community, nation and the entire planet.

Transcending space and time through the collective consciousness, it is possible to clear our lingering negativities from our own and others' past lives, past relationships, and the past lives of everyone in the collective consciousness through all time. All therapists can help to release major collections of negativity by systematically facilitating with their clients similar releases as individuals, and this is simultaneously an opportunity to release a load of collective consciousness negativity.

Such a concerted focus on clearing collective negativity could help to transform the negativity of humankind, which manifests as a collective post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  This is vitally important because humanity carries enormous collective PTSD residues that are expressed as the abused becoming abusers. This is one of the core psychological mechanisms bringing us to the point of the collective suicide of humanity and the genocide of countless other species on this planet through wars, global heating, pollution and wanton ecological mismanagement.

Using Ho’oponopono (a Hawaiian healing method), WHEE (Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT), or any of many other varieties of healing as a platform to heal the collective consciousness, we can release the angers, fears and hurts that lead us collectively to behave in these destructive ways. At the same time, each of us can be using our own individual healings not only to release negativity, but also to build positive, healing energies in ourselves and the collective consciousness, as practiced in WHEE (Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT). Similarly, therapists can help clients to do this type of clearing as they practice self-healing approaches on their own.

Key words: collective consciousness, planetary healing, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, Ho'oponopono, WHEE
(This article was slightly modified 081209)

The need for planetary healing

If it isn't global, it isn't going to work.
                        - Riane Eisler

While in the past there have been questions about the existence of global heating ('warming' is an unacceptable euphemism!), there is now general agreement that this is a real and rapidly worsening danger. Western society has created lifestyles that are unsupportable – consuming resources and producing wastes and pollution that are threatening the survival of humans and of many other species – perhaps even of every living organism on the planet. China, India and other developing nations are following close behind, seeking the same, lavish lifestyles that Hollywood and Western business interests have been promoting.

The primary agent for global heating is the increase in carbon dioxide produced by emissions from factories, electrical power plants, and cars. Global heating could become a runaway, irreversible phenomenon that makes our planet uninhabitable for most living things. One of the clearest witnesses to this process is the shrinking of glaciers (NASA, 2004). No one knows at what 'tipping point' there will be so much heating that ever more heating is generated through the releases of methane that lies frozen under glaciers and stored in the oceans. Methane's effects on global heating last much longer than those of carbon dioxide and are much more difficult, probably impossible, to reverse  (Brown, 2008; Hawken, 2007).

A second crucial problem is the limited water supplies on our planet. There are parts of our world where water is becoming so scarce that people are dying of thirst. This is a problem that will be faced soon by most nations, as water supplies from glaciers (which had supplied regular amounts of water in summer months) and ground water from wells are no longer sufficient to meet the demands of populations that have depended upon them (including major cities such as Phoenix and Albuquerque). Here again, we are living beyond our collective ecological means, squandering irreplaceable, essential resources (Brown, 2008; Hawken, 2007; Pearce, 2008).

A third resource that is not being managed responsibly is our food supply. For instance, the US is converting 30 percent of its corn crop of 2008 to biofuel. This is creating a crisis in world food supplies, pricing grain beyond the means of desperately hungry, now starving, nations (Brown, 2008).

In short, it is clear that our global society is behaving in ways that are threatening the continuation of existence of life as we know it on our planet. Through short-sighted, self-centered local planning and actions, humanity's behavior is genocidal and suicidal. While the term genocide has not been applied to non-human species, this is a clear result of current human behaviors.

Those who see and understand these patterns portend global disaster have struggled to develop plans to meet these and related global crises. There are wonderful websites where just about anyone interested can find kindred spirits with whom to join energies to save our planet (www.WiserEarth.org). Here you will find groups of people dedicated to just about every imaginable way of husbanding our resources better and healing the problems we have created, from pollution to recycling; from water waste to revitalizing rivers; from carbon profligacy to carbon units trading; and on, and on.

What I find missing in these approaches is the direct addressing of the need for shifts in awareness. No one has come up with a plan that can promote a major shift in consciousness – in the vast majority of people who have not yet awakened to these imminent dangers – and the need to reconnect our awareness of our oneness with our planet. Without this awareness, it is unlikely that enough changes in our carbon dioxide emissions, water use policies, and food allocations will be achieved before it is too late. There are 'tipping points' for global heating, for depletion of water supplies, and for global hunger beyond which these will become irreversible or so disruptive that millions or even billions of lives will be lost.  The consequences of any one of these (and other tipping points that we may be unaware of) will be catastrophic. Perhaps even all of life as we know it may die off – particularly if global heating reaches the runaway point (Brown, 2008).

What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.
                                    - Thich Nhat Hanh

A major element in the slowness to respond to global crises is the prevalence of selfish personal, local and national self-interests over the interests and needs of our global community. Even many who comprehend the need to address these issues are reluctant or unwilling to sacrifice more than token elements of their lifestyles in order to achieve the goals to address them. This is, in effect, a closedness to participating in the collective consciousness. By promoting one's self-interests over those of the global community, one is demonstrating an inability to sense that one is part of this collective consciousness.

More important, however, are the policies and acts of various governments that are selfishly persisting in profligate lifestyles which are rapidly becoming unsupportable. While token efforts are being made through carbon trading, these efforts are hampered and impeded by the lobbying of special interests such as the power and fossil fuel industries, and manufacturers who are avoiding accepting responsibility for their heavy carbon footprint on our planet.


Healing through the collective consciousness

We are at the edge of peril, but the same dynamics that have brought us too close for comfort also offer the potential for a moral vision that's based on our interconnectedness...
                                    - Elizabeth A. Debold

Spiritual healing does not appear to have any limits in the types of effects it can produce. Healing can be sent from many miles away and still be effective (Byrd, 1988; Harris, 1999; Nash, 1982; Sicher, et al. 1998). For the most part, the focus in research has been on healing individuals. Healing also has been reported anecdotally to improve relationships of individuals, couples and families, with one study suggesting healing effects from a distance upon therapy groups (Schutze, 1979). Not only are improvements seen when all the family members are receiving treatment, it also is noted frequently that relationships with non-participating relatives and friends shift on energetic levels, perhaps through telepathy or collective consciousness. A common report is that when people clear their own, personal issues regarding a relationship that has been difficult, stressful and even damaging, the other person will phone or write them a letter spontaneously, without any direct communication about the internal work they were doing from the person who did the emotional clearing. This may happen even when there was a history of neglect or abuse throughout childhood, and even when there has been no contact for decades with the other person. I have heard reports of healees, such as long-lost fathers turning up after twenty years, to amicable divorces after five years of bitter arguing.

Such healings occur also on a broader level. Transcendental Meditation has been shown in a variety of research studies to reduce local angers and negativity (Maharishi Web Reference). When one percent of the population is meditating, there are lower rates of violent crimes, auto accidents and terrorist attacks.

Other types of transpersonal healings have been reported. Mediums channel communications from the spirits of people who are no longer physically alive. Gary Schwartz and colleagues confirmed the validity of such communications beyond reasonable doubt (Schwartz, 2002), showing that with gifted mediums the accuracy of specific communications exceeded 1.2 x 10-8 = Odds against chance > 125 million to 1). Mediums may conduct counseling sessions between people who are still living and their departed relatives, to resolve issues that had lingered and festered, unresolved at the time of the relatives' death (Benor, 2006; Weiss, 1995).

There is a strong suggestion that world-wide, subtle energy shifts occur in the collective consciousness with events that involve large numbers of people. Studies of random number generators (RNGs) have provided fascinating evidence on this subject. RNGs are devices that randomly produce zeros and ones millions of times a second. When checked over many months and years, they produce fifty percent zeros and fifty percent ones. However, if a major event occurs that impacts numerous people anywhere in the world, then RNGs everywhere in the world deviate from their random functions at that time. For instance, the events of 911, the widely-televised finish of the OJ Simpson trial, and other such occurrences, which were each the focus of attention of many millions of people, were accompanied by simultaneous deviations of the RNGs from random outputs – all over the world (Radin, 2006).

Collective consciousness – as experienced by individuals – confirms global participations of personal consciousness. Again, it is worth mentioning the Maharishi effect, in which the meditations of one percent of a local population has been shown to influence the collective consciousness of the entire local community (Maharishi Web reference).

It is common for healers, both individually and in group gatherings, to send healing energies to Gaia, our planet, and to every sentient aspect of our ecobiological system. The internet has provided a channel for coordinating numerous global healing meditations of these sorts.

In traditional societies, prayers for healings of individuals will often include the healing of family, community, nation, global community and our planet. In these unbroken lines of healing that extend back to pre-recorded history, it is a societally accepted given that humans are all one with everything on the earth and with the Creator. Harming any aspect of creation is as unthinkable as harming ourselves, because we are a part of all creation and it is a part of us. Such healings may be directed back in time, to include healings of ancestral energies that persist in those who are treated on the physical plane.

While healings are practiced in traditional societies with these sorts of broader focus, they are generally limited to the clan or tribe, extended to the healing of nature. In many cases, the healers invite the participation nature for the purposes of helping the individuals being treated, rather than healing being extended in the opposite direction. In other cases, the healing boundaries of intent may set at the family, clan or tribe. Only in some cases is the focus on requesting healing for all of creation.

It is saddening to know that within some of these same healing traditions there are healers who will deliberately send negative energies to harm other healers, and who will ‘cast spells’ of negative energies for a price. This is a caution against the potentials for corruptions of power and applications of methodologies without a adherence to a guiding wholistic perspective that honors and respects the unity of all creation.

Individual, gifted healers, such as shamans are all capable of contributing to shifts in the collective consciousness. These healers act as anchored battery supplies of “balanced energy” that may be tapped into by individuals in the collective consciousness who need help.  These are unusual examples, but each of us has our contributions to make to the healing of the collective consciousness.


Supporting evidence

Nonlocal does not mean merely "a long way off" or "a very long time" but, rather infinitude in space and time. If something is nonlocal it is unlimited. Nonlocality, like pregnancy, is an all-or-nothing event. One cannot be "somewhat pregnant" or "a little nonlocal.
                                          - Larry Dossey, MD

Non-local effects in which a person communicates with others or influences a physical object or mechanical system (e.g. a random number generator) without direct physical interactions (including verbal or written communications) have been extensively studied and validated beyond reasonable statistical doubt (Radin, 2006). Spiritual healing (as in Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch, Reiki, prayer healing and related methods) demonstrates similar effects on dis-ease and disease; affecting electrodermal responses; enhancing plant, bacterial and yeast growth; and accelerating enzyme action (Benor, 2001a; 2001b). In Energy Psychology (EP), proxy/surrogate healing produces similar effects with distant interventions (Benor, 2008).

Varieties of mechanisms have been hypothesized to explain actions initiated through intention that produce effects from a distance. Thus far there have been no ways devised to validate any of the theories. We remain at an observational stage of study of these actions and awarenesses from a distance.

My personal preferred explanation is that we are all part of a collective consciousness, which allows us to interact with others as though each of us were a brain cell within a vast collective consciousness brain. Evidence that I find convincing in support of this theory includes:

Meta-analysis of studies of telepathy (Radin, 1997) demonstrate significant mind-to-mind communications (p < 10 x 10-8 = odds against chance of 10 billion to 1)
Meta-analysis of studies of clairsentience (Radin, 1997) demonstrate significant awareness of the inanimate world around us (p < 10 x 10-5 = odds against chance of 10 million to 1)
Meta-analysis of studies of precognition (Honorton & Ferrari, 1989) demonstrate significant abilities to connect with awarenesses across time (p < 10 x 10-24 = odds against chance of 10 million billion billion to 1)
Meta-analysis of intentional influence over the throw of dice (Radin & Ferrari, 1991) demonstrate significant abilities to alter their randomness (p < 10 x 10-7 =  odds against chance of 1 billion to one)
Meta-analysis of studies of intentional influence on electrodermal responses (Braud & Schlitz, 1991) demonstrate significant influence of one person upon the psychophysiological processes of another person (p < 1.4 x 10-6 = odds against chance of 1.4 million to 1).
Meta-analysis of intentional effects on electronic random number generators (Radin, 1997; Radin & Nelson, internet reference) demonstrate significant deviations from randomness ( p < 10 x 108 = odds against chance over 1 trillion to one)
Meta-analysis show that both believers and disbelievers in ESP perform significantly better than chance (Lawrence, 1993), with significance levels at (p <  10 x 10-8 = odds against chance greater than 1 trillion to 1)

The above impressive research strongly suggests that: telepathy and clairsentience (intuitive awareness of non-living parts of our world) exist, and that we are thus in constant mental contact and communication with every aspect of the universe. Psychokinetic effects (mind influencing matter) are demonstrated in the highly significant effects of intention on the throw of dice and on random number generators. Likewise, the research evidence strongly suggests that precognition exists, which means that our consciousness transcends time.

While the general evidence is not quite as robust for most categories of intentional healing effects, the impressive meta-analysis of healer effects on electrodermal responses (Braud & Schlitz, 1991) confirms that we can intentionally influence others from a distance. Since healing effects parallel in their nature the effects of telepathy, clairsentience, intentional effects on random number generators and on electrodermal responses, it would seem reasonable to speculate that other healing effects confirmed in the early research above, will also be validated in meta-analyses in good time. The fact that information can be exchanged between people anywhere, anywhen is clearly supported.

For most of us, these awarenesses are unconscious but demonstrable through statistical validations of small effects in large numbers of research trials. Gifted individuals may exhibit such abilities more regularly (Benor, 2001a). The fact that disbelievers demonstrate significant effects as well as believers do (Lawrence, 1993) suggests that everyone has some measure of these abilities.


Historical perspectives about psychological problems in the collective consciousness

Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart.
                            – Myla Kabat-Zinn

Human history is one of incredible angers, hatreds, wars and other cruelties on the one hand, and hurts, pains, anxieties, fears, guilts, losses, grief and bereavement on the other hand. The Bible, which has been a guide to moral principles in Western society, is full of bloody annihilations in wars and territorial conquests. Recent history demonstrates ever more efficient ways to annihilate those who are labeled as 'others' and enemies. The gas ovens of Nazi Germany and the indiscriminate use of firepower in Iraq that produces 'collateral damage' of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more who are injured. While the US government disputes that less than 100,000 have died, figures published by Johns Hopkins University in the medical journal Lancet estimate in 2006 was that the civilian death toll is closer to 650,000 (Burnham, et al. 2006). Another heinous crime against humanity is the use of ammunition laced with depleted uranium by US soldiers that is increasing birth defects and cancers (Johnson, 2002; Rense, web reference).

People ask, "How is it possible for people to be so cruel to each other?" Several answers for collective behaviors can be postulated from individual psychological theory and practice of psychotherapy.

Many of the abusive behaviors seen in groups of people resemble very closely what is labeled post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in individual psychopathology.

A PTSD may develop following traumatic experiences such as:

•    sexual abuse or rape;
•    personally suffering or observing someone else experiencing a serious injury, particularly in war situations and in automobile and other accidents;
•    verbal or physical abuse in childhood; and
•    other such traumas.

Symptoms of PTSD may include:

•    becoming overly emotional under minimal stress,
•    becoming easily angered,
•    becoming phobic about situations and relationships similar to the original traumas.
•    low self-esteem,
•    difficulties in concentrating
•    nightmares and difficulty sleeping,
•    headaches,
•    backaches,
•    other physical symptoms, and
•    re-enactment of trauma – against others.

Such PTSD symptoms may be so severe as to incapacitate a person (Davis & Bass, 1992). Similar reactions of lesser severity may result from such traumas as failing in an important endeavor; in being rejected by someone in a close relationship or someone in authority; being frightened severely; and the like.

People who have suffered PTSDs and other levels of physical and emotional trauma that is untreated are also likely to vent their negative feelings on others. For example, it is rare to find sexual perpetrators who have not suffered sexual abuse themselves. Soldiers returning from war with PTSDs often have violent tempers. Bullies were often bullied themselves, often by their parents. These problems may worsen with time, as people who suffer guilt often vent their suffering on others rather than doing the difficult, emotionally painful inner work of clearing their guilt.

This has a clear parallel with societal cycles of sectarian violence. The Irish and the Catholics; the Jews and the Arabs; and many other cultural and national groups have vented their angers at each other over generations. Many of the colonists in North America fled from religious sectarian abuse in Europe, venting their cultural PTSDs on relatively defenseless native populations.
These cultural problems worsen with time, as the collective hurts and angers increase and as the abusing groups come to devalue those they are abusing, labeling them as 'others.' This label allows the abusers to suffer less guilt in displacing and venting their frustrations and angers (from causes unrelated to their targets of abuse) upon people who are different from themselves.

Abuse is also vented frequently upon displaced targets. Teachers who suffered abuse may vent their buried, festering hurts and angers upon students; employers bully employees; doctors and nurses who were abused during their student and training are subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) abusive to each other and to people under their care.

The same is true of the collective consciousness. And one of our displaced targets is Gaia, our planet. Humanity has been abusive to many life forms. Consider our over-hunting and over-fishing to extinction of many species; our pollution of the environment; our exhaustion of natural resources such as water and trees; and more…


Women have been treated as second-class citizens and abused for thousands of years by men.
In numerous cultures, women have been divested of property rights, denied access to education and employment, and in many cases have suffered culturally sanctioned abuse, torture and murder. The millions of women burned at the stake in Catholic Europe and the smaller numbers treated similarly in Protestant America are but a few of the more recent historical examples.

It is so rare to identify a major matriarchal culture in human history that we may find it difficult to imagine what such a society might be like. We can speculate, however, with reasonable certainty, that there would be more expression of what we commonly acknowledge as feminine traits: more open expression of feelings; processing experiences and psychological reactions to them (rather than burying them outside of conscious awareness and moving on to another activity; or suppressing 'others' who make us uncomfortable by expressing feelings that we find uncomfortable); inclusiveness in relationships more than exclusiveness; cooperation more than competition; nurturing rather than exploiting relationships (Eisler, 1987; www.matriarchy.info).

A shift to matriarchal ways of relating is a radical change in relation to the masculine-dominated world of recorded history. It is not simply that women would take over the reins of governance and 'wear the pants' in the home, but that there would be all of the qualitative changes suggested in the previous paragraph.

The collective pain of women from abuse across many millennia has generally not been proposed as a contributor to the collective abuse of humans against each other. Eckhart Tolle speaks about this most clearly, in his discussions of the collective pain body. In addition, the individual and collective unconscious guilt of male perpetrators of such abuse would also be a contributor to further abuse.


Clearing PTSD symptoms

There is only one journey. Going inside yourself.
                          - Rainer Maria Rilke

In the past two decades, potent methods have been developed for dealing with PTSD. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) has proven highly effective in rapidly clearing PTSD (www.emdr.com). Meta-analyses of EMDR research have been sufficiently impressive to convince such bodies as the American Psychiatric Association that EMDR is a recommended alternative to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in treatment of severe stress (http://emdr.com/efficacy.htm). The one problem I have found with EMDR is that it can produce heavy abreactions (emotional outpourings) and is therefore recommended for use only in the therapist's office.

WHEE can release the symptoms of PTSD without producing heavy emotional abreactions (Benor, 2008). It is therefore safe to use on one's own.

WHEE includes elements from the Energy Psychology method called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). In EFT people tap on a long series of acupressure points with their fingers while reciting an affirmation. This produces the same releases of difficult feelings from PTSD experiences, but without producing heavy emotional abreactions. (See article by Ingrid Dinter on using EFT to treat PTSD from war traumas, in this issue of IJHC.) The problem I found with EFT is that when people are stressed, it is often difficult for them to remember the long series of points and they give up using EFT.

WHEE is the Wholistic Hybrid developed from EMDR and EFT. It is combines elements from EMDR and EFT. It is easily learned yet potently and deeply effective. WHEE can relieve and clear symptoms of traumas even when they have been present for many years.

'Ramona' had carried severe emotional scars for over five decades from repeated sexual abuse in childhood.  This had led her to a refuse to have children and had hindered her relationships with men over many years. With other therapies, she was able to take some of the edge off her emotional traumas, but still felt a level 10 (on a scale of 10) distress when recalling her childhood traumas. In less than an hour of using WHEE at a workshop, Ramona was able to clear this trauma so thoroughly that she felt herself to be a different person.

It is not the traumas, but the memories of the traumas and our buried emotions surrounding them that cause the problems. Releasing the emotions surrounding the memories is experienced as a profound transformation and growth. One does not forget the facts of the experience but when one releases the emotions, the memories are no longer painful. WHEE invites those who use it to connect with their spiritual resources – a part of the collective consciousness. More on this, below, and further examples of similar releases at Benor (current).

Eckhart Tolle speaks of the pain body (Tolle, 1999; 2008). This is a part of ourselves that appears to enjoy pain. The pain body vents anger and inflicts pain on others; it generates distress and anger that brings reactions of pain from others against us; and it criticizes and belittles us, inflicting pain upon ourselves.

Tolle identifies the pain body as an energetic entity. He also discusses the collective pain body of humanity, and especially of women through the ages. (This appears to be identical with the concept of a collective PTSD, discussed below).

My view of the pain body is that it is our hurt inner child, in the terminology of Transactional Analysis (Stewart and Joines, 1991). This part of ourselves remains childish in its memories of pain experiences and in how to deal with them. As with the handling of most psychological traumas, our inner programs (installed when we were very young) are to bury our hurts outside of conscious awareness and run away from them (Benor, 2008).

Tolle's recommendation for dealing with the pain body is to remain centered in the Now and not to give it energy. I fully agree that this is an excellent suggestion that promotes our spiritual awareness and development at the same time. The down-side of this approach is that this is a very slow process that can take many years to accomplish its goal of releasing us from the influence of our individual and collective pain bodies.

My personal preference is to address the individual pain body with WHEE, which is an easily learned, rapidly effective and deeply transformative way to release pains of all sorts (Benor, 2008). WHEE can bring about relief and clearing of PTSD symptoms within minutes, even when these have been present for many years. Other Energy Psychology and spiritual healing methods can help as well. In my experience, the pain body of individuals responds to WHEE as an inner child does, clearing traumas much more rapidly than an adult would.

A common recommendation of spiritual healers and transpersonal therapists is that the best way to heal humanity's collective traumas and psychopathology is for each person to heal her/himself.

One cannot really ever overcome the enemy until one has rid oneself
of that which is found despicable in the other.
                            – Stephen Levine

As each of us becomes a clearer and brighter pixel on the screen, the screen becomes clearer and brighter. Again, this is a recommendation with which I fully resonate. The drawback is that clearing of individuals is a slow way to brighten much of the screen – despite some healers' and intuitives' reports that every enlightened person brightens far more than their single pixel (Hawkins, 2002).

It appears unlikely that there is sufficient time to clear the CPTSDs of humanity one pixel at a time – before we reach one or more unknown and unpredictable tipping points, beyond which there is a runaway destructive process that is irreversible. The clearest example of this is in global heating, where the release of methane into the atmosphere (caused by warming due to carbon dioxide) can create increased global heating that can take 100 million years to reverse. The killing of bees (along with other insects) to the point of extinction may likewise make it impossible to pollinate plants, worsening global starvation.

I propose that there are several ways that we can further extend the focus of our therapy interventions to invite a greater healing in the collective consciousness. Healing is activated by the intent of caregivers and careseekers. We can broaden the focus of our intent when we are facilitating healing to include all of humanity.

The unconscious mind of an individual responds literally to hypnotic commands. There is every reason to believe that the collective unconscious will respond in a similar manner. When we are facilitating healing with an individual we may influence the whole planet by broadening the intent and the language of our healing to include an invitation to the collective consciousness to join in.

Proxy/surrogate healing, allows therapists and healers to link with the people they are helping and to do the clearing of issues on themselves (the therapists) – in place of the other person. For instance, the therapist treating a traumatized person from a distance would say, "I am [name of person to be treated]. I hereby release any and all trauma and residuals of the trauma from every cell and fiber and energy and memory of my being." I have seen excellent results with this variation of distant healing.

Extended family proxy healing can direct the healing that is offered to an individual careseeker so that the releases include invitation to others in that person's family who may have experienced similar traumas and hurts to release their traumas, if they so choose. This often occurs even when no conscious invitation has been extended to do so. For instance, it is not uncommon for several siblings and a mother to have suffered abuse from the same abuser as the person who has come for therapy. If this family clearing is done with the express permission of the careseekers, they may be able to expand on the healing of their families' residual traumas over time – as awarenesses of needs and further opportunities for healing arise.

Treating past life trauma can clear lingering, often troublesome residues in an individual's current lifetime. In healing past life traumas, it is not uncommon to find an original trauma that has been perpetuating the manifestations of negative behaviors and experiences in a whole series of lifetimes including the present lifetime. For instance, a person in this lifetime may carry anger at others for having been murdered in a previous lifetime. This anger may manifest in the current lifetime as a totally unconscious, apparently irrational venting of negativity upon others. Clearing the past life trauma clears the anger in that individual in her or his current lifetime. Often, the roles of abuser and abused are reversed in successive lifetimes. Clearing the residual hurts of previous lives can produce releases of blocks to progress in the current life of those related to that person as well (Benor, 2006; Weiss, 1995).

In clearing these past life residues of traumas, we may also be clearing energies that resonate with numerous other people through having participated in the same incidents over the same long periods of past lives – releasing the hurts and angers and other negative feelings of a whole series of people. During healing sessions we can ask to invite clearing of residual trauma “from all the ancestors, current family members and descendants.”

Proxy (surrogate) healing of collective negativity is a further option. Proxy healing is taught as a form of spiritual healing. One person can resonate with the problems of another, clearing negativity in the other person through the collective consciousness link. I have seen impressive examples of healings of this sort. The most striking was when I visited a healer who was baby-sitting a six-year old boy who has developmental delays and appeared to have an autistic spectrum disorder. He was severely frightened by the healer's two dogs, which were lively and playful. He had been in the healer's home several times previously, and was constantly on the alert, if not alarmed, by any approach of the animals to within several feet. Within minutes of my proxy tapping for his fears of the animals, he was markedly less fearful. He had never been that calm before in the animals' presence.

Spiritual aspects of PTSD are only now coming to be appreciated. Any and every trauma can be an invitation to bring us into deeper awareness of our life meanings and interconnections with other people and with all of creation. (See discussions of spiritual aspects of PTSD in an article in this issue of IJHC by Kalischuk, Solowoniuk, and Nixon; Discussion of general personal spirituality in Benor, 2006.) This is a subject that is too vast to expand upon here, yet may be one of the most important aspects of our existence today.


Ho’oponopono healing

Proxy healing has been developed by Ho'oponopono, in which the healer acknowledges the negativity of others within him or herself in order to clear them in the other person. The healer goes through a classical, succinct formula: "I am sorry.  Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you." This clearing of our own negativity can produce profound changes in the individuals we are addressing (Len, Web reference).

A striking example is the Ho'oponopono healer who worked in a hospital for the criminally insane in Hawaii. He never saw the patients. He simply read through their charts, clearing within himself the negativities that resonated with those of the people whose life stories he was reading. Many of the patients were dramatically improved; some were even released from the hospital (Vitale, web reference). Further examples of Ho’oponopono healings are offered by Amy Thakurdas in another article in this issue of IJHC.

Other variations similar to Ho’oponopono have been developed within Hawaiian healing traditions (King, web references).

It is clear that many healers across many cultures have grasped the essence of this approach or of parts of it, witnessed by the quotes below and others in this article.

… first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
                         - Matthew 7:5

Bless those who challenge us to grow, to stretch, to move beyond the knowable, to come back home to our elemental and essential nature.  Bless those who challenge us for they remind us of doors we have closed and doors we have yet to open.  They are big medicine teachers for us.
                        - Navajo saying

Considering that proxy healing appears to be effective, there is every reason to believe that if we broaden our focus, we can broaden and deepen the effects of our clearing for PTSDs within the collective consciousness. During healing sessions, we can ask to clear the same residuals of PTSDs that we are clearing in ourselves and/or in careseekers who have come to us for help, "…from any and all beings who are open to releasing these issues of anger, hurt, etc. due to PTSD, anywhere on earth, through all time."

If we broaden our focus, we can broaden and deepen the effects of our clearing for PTSDs within the collective consciousness. During therapy sessions, we can ask to clear the same hurts, angers, fears and other residuals of traumas that we are clearing in ourselves and/or in careseekers who have come to us for help,

"…from any and all beings who are open to releasing these issues of angers, fears, hurts, or other feelings and memories, anywhere on earth, through all time."

“I resonate with any and all such feelings in the collective consciousness of this world.  I am sorry.  Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you.”

“I invite anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere, anywhen and everywhen to clear their issues that resonate as I release [mine/ those of this client].”

I find in my own practice of personal clearing and in helping clients to clear their traumas, extending one's individual healing to the collective is experienced as a positive aspect to self-healing. It gives meaning – and thereby solace and satisfaction – to one's suffering when in the end this turns out to be growth promoting and supporting to oneself and to others. Judith Swack, in another article in this issue of IJHC, discusses the clearing of negative energies that can influence individuals and groups, using HBLUTM; and Tapas Fleming suggests similar clearings to those in this article as a part of TAT.

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
                            - Helen Keller

How far could this sort of clearing go? Since spiritual healing knows no limits, it is highly likely that negativity could be cleared not only in individuals, but in their present relationships and also in their past lives, all the way back to 'Lucy,' the single, earliest human from whom all present humans are descended – per genetic mapping (Rincon, 2003).


WHEE adds to Ho'oponopono in several ways

There are times when PTSD traumas are so severe and the residual emotional distress is so raw and intense that it may be difficult for a person to begin to consider the contributions through the collective consciousness that they themselves may have made to the interactions that were traumatic. Saying any or all of the Ho’oponopono, "I am sorry.  Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you." may be difficult if not impossible.

WHEE is an incredibly potent self-healing method that enables people to release angers, hatreds, emotional and physical pains, fears, flashbacks, insomnia and other aspects of PTSD. WHEE may help people to reach a point of being able to engage in the Ho’oponopono process.

Another way WHEE can be helpful is when people are through with using the Ho’oponopono. Many therapies follow the medical model of treating problems – to ameliorate or clear symptoms and cure diseases. WHEE, taking a lesson from EMDR, teaches ways to insert positive cognitions and feelings after releasing the negative problems. For instance, after clearing some measure of fears, angers and hurts from a personal PTSD, a person could insert and strengthen beliefs about having had growth-promoting lessons in dealing with the PTSD and learning to connect with and strengthen feelings of trust, love, acceptance and forgiveness.

WHEE extends this into wholistic healing, including spiritual applications for self-healing. In this instance, WHEE can be used to invite healing within the collective consciousness. After clearing the negatives within ourselves and inviting the collective consciousness to release whatever resonates with our personal releases, we can invite the collective consciousness to connect with positive awarenesses and healing and to strengthen these.

“I invite anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere, anywhen and everywhen to invite positive [energies/ awarenesses/ hopes/ intentions] that resonate as I invite these into the lives of myself [and those of this client].”

People commonly come into a peaceful state as they use WHEE. Here, it is possible for them to look back on their traumatic life events and acknowledge that these were difficult but enormously helpful and growth-promoting experiences.


Connecting with the oneness of all reconnects us with our planet

Mother Earth as the ultimate teacher. At few points in history has the need to rediscover this teacher been greater.
                            - Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer,
                              Joseph Jaworski & Betty Sue Flowers

In addition to offering individual and collective healings to others through our personal healings, the process of enhancing awareness of the collective consciousness also reconnects us with Gaia, our planet. As we become aware that we are part of the All, we become more sensitive to what is happening to our environment. Any potential harm or damage to our planet is immediately seen as a harm or damage to ourselves.

In part, we have been closed to our interconnectedness with the All because of the vicious circles established by our PTSDs. Because we have been hurt, we distance ourselves from others to prevent further hurt. One of the ways we do this is to shut off our intuitive, psychic awarenesses of our oneness with others. Having shut off this link of awareness of others and of our oneness with our environment, we become used to having a barrier of unknowing between ourselves and the world outside our physical selves. Connecting with others across that barrier feels strange and unsafe. This leads us to maintain and increase our distance from others.

Through the exercise of reaching out in healing to others, we begin to transcend and dismantle these barriers. When enough people waken to this elemental awareness of oneness with each other and with our planet, hopefully we will be able to stop the global heating and other excesses of humanity that threaten the continued existence on this world of all life as we know it.


Parallel resonations in the collective consciousness

Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important.  The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering.  We're discovering the universe.
                    - Pema Chodron

Paul Hawken (2007) has an amazing book on ways to meet our global challenges. He suggests some surprisingly positive observations on our current dire situation.

When asked at colleges if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a heart. What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.
 (p. 4)
 
Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act.
Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. New York, NY: Viking Penguin 2007, p. 5.

The individuals featured in this book all try to do good, but this book is not only about doing good. It is about people who want to save the entire sacred, cellular basis of existence-the entire planet and all its inconceivable diversity. In total, the book is inadvertently optimistic, an odd thing in these bleak times. I didn’t intend it; optimism discovered me.
Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. New York, NY: Viking Penguin 2007, p. 8.

We are so immersed in the collective PTSD that it is difficult for us to deal with it in totally transformative ways. We tend to see the traumatic experiences of individuals and of humanity as a whole as tragedies; as the product of evil in others and in ourselves – to be fought and avoided. Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist who has explored transpersonal awarenesses through deep psychotherapy, observes that good and evil are intrinsic to life. God’s creation of evil may be understood in the Creator’s exploration of all aspects of knowing creation (Grof 1998).

The existence of the shadow side of creation enhances its light aspects by providing contrast and gives extraordinary richness and depth to the universal drama. The conflict between good and evil in all the domains and on all levels of existence is an inexhaustible source of inspiration… (p. 114)

Grof points out that if disease were totally eliminated, we would also eliminate medical research and the pioneers and heroes who advance medical knowledge, opportunities for compassionate care and love, and the miracles of healing, We would not have doctors, shamans, miraculous healings or psychic surgeons and would not have had Mother Teresa, nor reasons to award her and others a Nobel Prize.

Considering a world without evil in oppression, wars, and genocide, Grof suggests that we would eliminate major portions of human history. We would never know the heroic acts of people fighting for liberty – people who dedicated their whole being and at times even sacrificed their lives for causes they believed just, and to advance the ideals of their fellow-man and their country. There would be no triumphs over evil empires, nor any real appreciation of freedoms because we would never know the experiences of oppression that make these so sweet.

Along with these losses, he observes, we would be missing the richness of story, poetry, song, theater, painting, sculpture, and other art that have been inspired by these struggles. The need for religion would be very much weakened, “…since God without a powerful adversary would become a guaranteed commodity that would be taken for granted.” (Grof 1998, p. 116)  We would have little need for ritual life and would be missing a major motivation for reaching into the spiritual dimensions.  In short, Grof concludes, we would lose many dimensions of the cosmic drama that energize and inspire our existence.

Others have put it more succinctly:

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
                         – Helen Keller

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer.
                         – Albert Camus

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
                        – William Penn

I believe the drama of good and evil on the stage of the outer world fascinates us because it resonates with struggles on our inner stage between good and evil thoughts, feelings and impulses. Each of us faces challenges of desires, hurts, fears and angers, with pangs of guilt and shame. How we handle each of these innerworld tests – of our moral fiber, emotional fortitude, and willpower – is reflected in outerworld conflicts and struggles. We find inspiration to understand better and deal with our own inner conflicts through the struggles of outerworld heroes. Each of us then knows good immeasurably better because of our vicarious and personal struggles with evil.

Acknowledging that evil illuminates and intensifies our appreciation of good in no way condones evil or suggests that we must not do our best to avoid and eliminate it. It does, however, relieve us of a sense of wrongness about the universe and God’s role in creating a world that includes evil.

Another source of lessons about good and evil comes from peacemaking circles. These circles include as many people from both sides of a conflict as can be mustered to a series of discussions to hear the stories of each side. Through this process, empathy and understanding are fostered – to the point that victims and perpetrators can agree on the steps necessary for a just restitution. Surprisingly, even in cases of murder and rape, it is possible to achieve this. In this process, there are often major healings of family and community conflicts, extending far beyond the original individual perpetrators and victims (Pranis, et al. 2003)

One may well ask whether a world of spiritual growth and learning is possible without the inner and outer struggles with negativity. I actually find such a world difficult to imagine. In my experience, most people (including myself) tend towards complacency, satiety and laziness when not challenged in some way to rise above themselves.

But if we allow ourselves to consider a world in which collective consciousness were far more open and pervasive than we know today, how might this evolve? What if our intuitive awarenesses were completely open? As confirmed in the research cited above, we all have a modest measure of telepathy, clairsentience (knowing our connection with the outer world, including its inanimate aspects), precognition and retrocognition (knowledge that transcends time), but these are very weakly active in most of us.

If our collective consciousness were wide open, we would have

Immediate and full communications with every other living being;

Immediate and full awareness of our interconnection with the environment and with Gaia, our amazing ecobiological living system;

No way to be dishonest;

No need for distrust of others

I believe it is highly likely that we have cut off our intuitive awarenesses out of fears related to the collective PTSD. Animals clearly have and regularly use these abilities – from ants, termites and bees who coordinate their activities in hives (Marais, 1971); to birds who fly and fish who swim in large groups in unison; to pets who know when their masters are returning home (Sheldrake, 2000). An extra benefit of clearing the collective consciousness therefore may well be our reconnecting more strongly with our intuition.


Ethical issues of clearing CPTSD through the collective consciousness

There are ethical questions with proxy/surrogate healing, in which an individual invites healing in others who may not have consented to such an intrusion in their lives (much less even being aware of it on a conscious level). It is generally considered improper to send distant healing without the permission of the healee. Distant healing is a potent intervention (Benor, 2001a; b). This would be like pouring a medicine down someone's throat, without asking their permission, because we think it will be good for them.

Ho'oponopono does not push healing upon others. It invites others to resonate with the self-healing we do on ourselves. This is a respectful way of offering distant healing and does not appear to diminish its effectiveness – through research has yet to confirm these anecdotal observations. Inviting healing through the collective consciousness – as we clear negativity in ourselves and help others to do the same for themselves – is likewise a respectful way to offer healing for the CPTSD.


In summary

Do good unto others because they are you!
                        - Larry Dossey, MD

Through very simple extensions of current healing approaches, we can facilitate healings of traumas in the collective consciousness that are contributing to what is, in effect, a collective PTSD. This may be a way to promote planetary healing and to avert the suicide of humanity and genocide of all other living beings on this planet.


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Please let me hear from you if this resonates in any way with your ways of healing this planet.
DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com

*This article appears as the editorial in The International Journal of Healing and Caring - On line, September, 2008, 8(3), 1-19

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