Peace by Empathy

A friend invited me to still another noon meeting. She knows I’m a late breakfast type of guy, but, this time, the guest speakers’ profiles appeared too impressive to decline going to the luncheon for coaches. My friend and I aren’t sports coaches; instead, we are the kinds of coaches who help clients practice peace by empathy for setting and manifesting goals whether business or personal.

I groomed, and drove to the restaurant. The experience you are about to read proves my attendance at the gathering was as serendipitous as one can imagine.

After the meal, one of two men stood to speak from the guest panel of four corporate coaches representing two multinational corporations. Usually, when a talking business head opens his mouth, I immediately turn on my critical thinking, but this time an involuntary intention to be open minded was felt.

As the story was reported by the corporate coach, a high-ranked male leader of a corporation castrated his company’s audience to the level of their feeling the humiliating scorch and burn theory of management. After a series of coaching sessions, the corporate leader made amends.

I had been at the right place at the right time to hear a story that calmed my torch bearing tendency. When a male corporate coach has the leverage and savvy communication skills to confront a corporation’s male leadership, many of whom possess a fortified ego that must appear in tact, then I regard the coach as a role model for making a difference in a realm of importance – the masculine repressed, profit by any means, competitive corporate arena.

As the coach spoke, something unexpected happened inside me. For several seconds, I felt a physical shift deep within my chest, as if a delicate porcelain dish was gently and so slowly slipped into the middle of a stack of heavy, ovenware dinner plates. That’s truly the best way I can visualize it for you.

The feeling was stunning. I couldn’t help but stay totally focused in my body, not able to give space for my usual linear brained distraction. The synchronous emotional and physical shifts were a peaceful, healing moment; a lightness was felt inside.

The book titled I Don’t Want to Talk About It by Terrence Real, a male psychotherapist, was reminisced at the moment I felt compassion for onerous loads carried by males. Dr. Real exposes meticulous ways some men cover up episodes, repressed since youth, which secretly provoked repeated anger and disappointment, both of which are associated with and can result in deep depression.¹

Rather than expressing one’s love and empathy, many males unwittingly substitute outstanding job performance as well as artificial performances as a husband and father. Out of harsh dominations, substitutions have gone on for thousands of years. Today, the quietly burdened masculine performer who hardly knows the words that reveal a range of vulnerabilities, those feelings felt below the neckline, is often mistaken for a male’s good image.

Since my empathic experience for males and their suppressors, information about mothers and children came my direction like wind rushing through a tunnel. I have been facing into the wind, grabbing onto floating thoughts and ideas, then weeping at the findings I felt nudged to examine.

A lecture by Joseph Chilton Pearce inspired me. Pearce’s passionate exploration into human consciousness and child development includes, more recently, the amazing connections between the human brain and the physical heart.²

At first, you might wonder how collective reverence for motherhood would impact global suppressions. Let us keep eyes open, and stay awake: Protection of motherhood might reach critical mass as we move further into several more years of recondite hypotheses revealed.

During pregnancy, if the female feels secure, wanted, loved, cared for, the fetus develops a large forebrain and a sharply decreased hindbrain. If the female feels insecure, unwanted, unloved, uncared for, the fetus develops a large hindbrain and a sharply decreased forebrain.

The emotional state of the mother determines form, function, shape, and structure of the infant’s brain in utero, as well as through the ‘in the arms’ period, those first nine months after birth, and beyond.

Imagine the ‘Universal Forces That Be’ could speak English, asking this question upon conception of every child: ‘With this new life coming in, will we go for our highest intelligence, or will we have to defend ourselves, again?’

Interpretations of emergent data describe the forebrain, more specifically the prefrontal cortex, as that part of the brain allowing humans to ascribe meaning to the above paragraph. The prefrontal cortex refers to distinguishing higher virtues of the forebrain from the decadence of the hindbrain.

An enlightened, educated, schooled, or otherwise reasonable culture, which listens to their scientists, will rally to assure every pregnant female is protected, not ignored, not neglected, and is given as much care, love, and consideration as that culture can possibly provide.

Whether Earthlings remain within confines of our ancient reptilian, survival-defense brain generating conflict in families, businesses, and regenerating wars, or whether we move into the next phase of empathic intelligence, depends on the pregnant mother’s emotional state.

To exalt and champion motherhood would cause humanity’s escorting onto Earth radically different people, and rapidly, too. We would release illusions’ pressures for high standards of living, and create and sustain higher qualities of life. All levels of business would alter: from grassroots entrepreneurs to international corporations; from governments and banking systems to educational and religious institutions; and, our grandchildren’s lives would experience an exquisitely different world from today.

My hope is many males would seek empathic programs: to move through excruciating pain for uncovering and naming a spectrum of feelings, to love themselves, and to protect their wives and their children from fear.

I see how elegantly females and males could create masses of nurture and peace on Planet Earth. Things are going to work out for us Earthlings but not by business alone; certainly not by linear brained ethics nor moralistic invectives; instead, through biological transformation. I say bring on peace by empathy.

References

¹ Real, Terrence (1997). I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster / Scribner paperback.

² Joseph Chilton Pearce lectured at Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, New York, May, 2005. Relevant notes reflected in this article were retrieved from Pearce’s live lecture accessed at http://wie.org.

Our constant curiosity is key
to watching what’s being created.
~ David Moorhead