I landed in Tel Aviv tonight. I am exhausted from not a lot of sleep over the past three nights. I don’t sleep well on planes though I did have whole rows of seats to myself on both my night flights (Washington, DC to Brussels and Brussels to Tel Aviv). I was able to get prone for a while. Now, I am waiting for my friend / colleague, Melissa Saul, to arrive around 3:30 am, Tel Aviv time. We will go to Jerusalem for some rest.
Since I am so tired, I find that my brain isn’t as sharp and tuned into observing things and human experiences that are happening around me. I do find that I am feeling relatively peaceful within myself. The Tel Aviv airport is a very nicely designed, artistically appealing facility. I moved through the system of passports, customs, and baggage claim with great ease. I also was observing the amount of security cameras, and most likely, security staff, to provide protection. I also thought about how much privacy we have lost in the name of safety within the United States since 9/11 and the advent of mobile technology.
I also reflected on how a system will tolerate an individual until “they” decide that they don’t want to embrace an individual. Things can easily be fabricated and one person’s fear can affect others. I have seen where people will not stand up against the fabrication for fear there could be retribution back on them. Our oldest emotion, shame or the fear of being kicked out of the “tribe,” begins to override our decision-making and we no longer aspire to the higher emotions and qualities of being human. We drop to our lower brain functions, which is not much more advanced than being a reptile. I have seen this happen within a federal bureaucracy. It happened to me.
The experience that I went through in that federal agency has been very difficult for me to talk about, let alone write about. What occurred just seems unbelievable. There was no ill-intention on my part. All I can say was that the person in charge was afraid of my personal power. He wasn’t even able or willing to consider how to turn that power to his advantage, as I offered.
That period of my life was very painful and humiliating. However, through the incredible painful experiences, I have found great joy. I am in Israel tonight because I have been willing to forge through the pain of abusive power. I still don’t have all the answers for what completely happened. I still am baffled. However, I am also very grateful.
My best thinking about power, so far, is that it is about having control. Having control, I believe, is a reaction to the fear of losing control. In other words, I see abusive power as fear-based. Fear is an automatic reaction from our lower brain. Unfortunately, I see much of our nation being managed by fear-based individuals.
Consequently, the best we can do when we are afraid is to compromise. Compromise brings out a sense of loss in individuals. Compromise behaviors lead to mediocrity, at best. We have many, many important things to make decisions about in our nation and world today. Unfortunately, we are governed by people who are making decisions from the lower brain, not the higher brain.
I have experienced significant situations where the fear was managed, and the humans involved focused on their higher brain functions. When that occurred, remarkable, and some say, impossible, things occurred. One example was with a large government that I worked with where we passed a budget unanimously while dropping the budget significantly, reaching the agreement months early, without losing jobs, cutting salaries, and reducing important programs.
Basically, I helped these people move from focusing on their fears to, instead, focusing on the hopes. The fears are bound to happen – it’s automatic! We are “hard-wired” to focus on fears first. This is where survival of the fittest comes from, which is flight or fight. However, I believe we can neutralize these fears by acknowledging the fears, then moving our thoughts to our hopes, which is a higher brain activity.
This philosophy will be part of the work that I hope to introduce in Palestine during this trip, at a small scale. I also hope to build capacity, much like what I was able to do in Mali, West Africa several years ago, so the local people are empowered with the knowledge of managing fears and moving toward hopes. When this happens, this work can potentially spread. I am not afraid of containing the knowledge that I know. The more people that understand this work and act on it, the more hope I have for the future of our world, and for my children.
