Wow. I just opened an email newsletter titled “Your body is a miracle they want you to fear; don’t take the bait”. I’ve been feeling a wide range of emotions about this coronavirus pandemic and its global implications, but I’ve struggled to find the words about what bothers me most about it. And suddenly there it is, so perfectly said: your body is a miracle they want you to fear.
All the fear and panic out there, and the relentless messaging that we are weak – that is what most disturbs me. All the incredible healing I’ve seen and experienced in my own life – it doesn’t fit in with all this. My whole being naturally resists it because I’ve learned for myself the opposite: that we are powerful and that our bodies have an amazing ability to heal. Everything I’ve learned about the human microbiome invalidates Germ Theory, the theory from which many believe that there are microorganisms that exist simply to harm us, and so they are to be controlled or eradicated. Is the decision to lock down the entire planet based on a debunk theory? Are we so unwilling to consider that we are actually made of bacteria and viruses, and that they have a vital role to play in our existence? The startling discovery of the microbiome revealed that we are in fact more bacteria than we are human – the ratio of bacterial protein-coding genes to human genes is 360:1. The human body is a host for a vast, complex ecosystem of microorganisms that control all functions, and viruses are an important part of that ecosystem. Without its microbiome, the human body cannot function.
The dominant narrative about the coronavirus, as well as the solutions being rolled out, feels very tunnel-vision-like, as though we are failing to look at the big picture. Countless things, including the emerging research on bacteria and viruses, are being ignored because they don’t match up with the story of fear, weakness and control.
What I see is that our world leaders (and what a tough job they have right now!) are acting on fear based on our past, instead of on our potential as human beings. I am 36 years old and it was only in recent weeks that I, thank goodness, woke up to the chains of my past, so I know a bit about this and I sincerely feel for them. I used to feel angry, but once I pushed myself out of my I-am-a-helpless-victim chair, and after much thought and soul-searching, I have finally arrived at a sense of compassion for our leaders and for what is going on in the world right now.
Let’s talk about blame and accountability for a minute. When I blame someone or something else for my feelings and my circumstances, I choose to do so because it’s easy. It means I get to be off the hook, and not accountable for what my life is like. I don’t have to be fully responsible for how my life turns out. It means I get to avoid the difficult truth: that actually I had everything to do with it. And boy, it feels comfortable for a while, but soon enough it turns yucky – a pity party that has gone on for too long. I’ll give you an example. There was a time in my life when I believed that it was hard to make new friends. And I blamed everyone else for it – how everyone is too busy, that people usually don’t “get” me, that their culture is too different to the one I grew up with, and the list goes on. That was way easier than facing how I was responsible: I let the fear of rejection get the better of me. And that fear affected my ability to create and keep meaningful relationships. Now, when I get sick, do I say “I am suffering so much because of this damn virus that my colleague infected me with” or do I say “I feel so unwell because I neglected to nourish and take care of my body”? Do I ask “Didn’t my colleague consider that he should just stay home??” or do I ask “How can I listen to my body better? How can I strengthen my immune system?” When I see that natural disasters are getting worse every year, do I say “Our policy makers and big corporations don’t value the environment” or do I say “Every purchase I make and every bit of plastic I dispose of has a direct knock-on effect on the health of the earth and of future generations”?
As a society, do we choose to put the spotlight on a juicy scapegoat: the coronavirus, investing time and money on developing a vaccine so that we may go on living in ways that are unsustainable and harmful to the earth and ourselves? Or do we choose to look at the hard truths? Did we fail to look after our planet? Did we set up or contribute to fragile systems that destroy more than they create? Did we allow and support the corruption of our food system? Did we manufacture toxins thinking they would do no harm? Did we lose sight of what keeps us alive and well? Did we forget where we came from? The real solutions to this pandemic depend on us asking the difficult questions and continuously seeking the truth. It requires the courage to look inward. Like any effective healing protocol, we will only find lasting success if we treat the root cause and not the symptom.
I’ll leave you with this question I heard from Dr Thomas Cowan at his interview with Sayer Ji:
“Imagine there is a world-famous dolphin doctor, and he goes to the artic circle and he finds healthy, happy dolphins, just like their ancestors from thousands of years past. And then all of a sudden the dolphins start dying. You’re there and you can ask the doctor only one question. Which of these would you ask him?
A) Did these dolphins have a genetic problem?
B) Did they have a virus?
or (excuse my French)
C) Did somebody put some sh*t in the water?”