In my video blog about ‘Reimagining Health’, I talked about the fact that our well being is not and cannot be an isolated, individualistic experience. The truth is that we are part of a Corporate Body (that is a community of people with a physical environment in which we live) with a Corporate Soul (a set of beliefs/mindsets/worldview) and a connection to the Corporate Spirit (which in my view is either the spirit of love aka God or the spirit of fear). These corporate experiences have a massive impact on our individual sense of health and wellbeing, and actually, as we are part of the corporate, our individual wellbeing has an impact on others around us also.
Our Corporate Soul is the issue I want to concentrate on in this post. It is complex and something to which I believe we pay little attention. However, it’s effect on our individual and corporate wellbeing is vast. Take a moment to think about the subliminal messages that come through our various forms of news and multimedia everyday.
“Your life isn’t as good as your ‘friends’ on Facebook”
“You need to be on Facebook or you are missing out on so much”
“Unemployment is being caused by Immigrants – be wary of them”
“Be afraid – people hate our country and are trying to kill us for the ‘values’ we uphold”
“The way our country does things is right and just and those who die for ‘our country’ are never to be forgotten”
“Pollution is rising – we are heading for natural disasters”
“Buy the new car – you need it, don’t worry about the pollution – live for the now”
“The chocolate industry is built on the slave trade”
“You can’t change anything, so keep on eating all the chocolate you want”
“Banks are to blame for the financial crisis”
“We have bailed out the banks with taxpayers’ money, because we need them so much.”
“Really the reason for our national debt is the poor, who claim too many benefits – we should blame them because they are lazy – we won’t bail them out”
“We all need to live longer”
“We can live however we want – our healthcare is free”
“Our children aren’t doing as well as some other children around the world when we measure them against a set of very narrow targets – therefore we need more targets and more testing”
“The only way to keep our nation really safe is to keep the nuclear deterrent – in the end, this is what makes us safe”
“Our armed forces protect us by using violent force to topple regimes which do not suit our national interest. Power vacuums are now left in those nations with untold turmoil and the rise of significant extremism of which we should be even more afraid and need to silence. We will do this with more force. The use of violence make us feel safe”
No wonder we are so messed up. We have some very damaging and also conflicting messages coming at us, especially through the (social) media 24/7. When do we stop to ask ourselves how healthy our worldview/beliefs/mindsets are? How much of our life is driven by fear? A fear of want? A fear of lack? A fear of the ‘other’? A fear of loss? A fear of debt? A fear of attack? And how much of this feeds our individual(istic) souls of self-protectionism?
How badly we need some conversations together that enable us to challenge some of our current core beliefs. We will not find a place of health and well-being, happiness or wholeness until we do. We have aligned our lives with the Spirit of Fear and our Corporate Soul is entirely broken as a result. We must realign ourselves with the story of Love. There is so much goodness out there. Can you see it? Only love can drive out fear. Only love can heal and awaken our souls to another holistic way of being.
