Our Best Weapon to Heal is Community
Don't succumb to the isolation and lies that tell you otherwise!
I.) The Pathology of Isolation
One of the most deadliest pathologies of humanity is Isolation.
The Western cosmology (read: Colonizer White Supremacy) has convinced the modern world that their lies are real, such as:
Every man for himself
Success is self-made
No pain, no gain
Fake it til you make it
It’s not my problem
There is only ONE way
Man is more powerful than Nature/God
Are you surprised that the human species is sicker now than fifty years ago despite technological advances?
The medical-techno-industrial complex is the latest branch of colonization and human oppression in the 21st century. Somehow, we’ve been bamboozled to believe that it’s OK for medicine to hurt or kill us. It’s OK for our doctors to not care about our feelings or needs. It’s OK for our leaders to leverage our own bodies and health against us as a tool of submission.
Then, there’s the politics of disease. What is a disease, really?
Disease, at the root, can be understood as a disruption in natural function. Every day, more categories of being ill and dysfunctional continue to appear in our lexicon, along with, the first, second, third, and fourth-generation synthetic compounds claiming to cure or manage it all. But if they work, then why are there so many cases of adverse effects, drug resistance, and inefficacy?
Soon, you may find yourself part of the growing class of isolated beings feeling lost, helpless, hopeless, and overwhelmed by why comfortability and progress seem so damn elusive.
When you isolate a living being, the quality of life begins to decline and its lifespan shortens significantly. Colonization has a simple formula: divide, take, destroy. It’s the first phase, division, that is the tricky underbelly of breeding isolation for generations. Create a new land, race, disease, religion, ideology, law, or some form of exclusivity to push the concept of “Otherism” and presto, an instant distraction sure to cause isolation, mistrust, confusion, and blindness from the obvious cure.
Today’s isolation strategies haven’t changed much over time at the core level. Essentially, anything to get you to believe that the shitty option is your best option, will usually do the trick.
Examples of how we enable forms of isolation that destroy our collective health:
Labor abuse and burnout - working 40 - 70+ hour weeks
Corporate loyalty and salaried work as disguises for capitalist enslavement
Forced relocation for educational and career opportunities
The disillusion of having money/wealth as success and buying happiness
Systems of Exploitation - Poverty, Miseducation, Indigenous Erasure, War
The -Isms and Phobias (racism, sexism, me-ism, homophobia, etc.)
Massive debts from cars, houses (not land), credit cards - Liabilities!
Junk and Fast Food Addictions
Substance abuse to cover up trauma
Diagnostic Identity Crisis - basing identity on what disease you’re told to have forever versus how you cure and manage it into remission.
The list could continue, but I think you’re seeing a pattern emerge. In each scenario, we can become detached from our true purpose and humanity. These aberrant behaviors, habits, and belief systems often lead to unnatural states of existence. Over time, a person experiences an un-doing of connection. As the disconnection continues, fear and pain beget eventual self-isolation and quiet suffering.
The most radical act of healing one can embark on is to heal through community.
We were never designed or created to live in isolation.
Most living beings can self-heal, but only when in conditions that are conducive for life, not death.
The current Western lifestyle conditions are controlled by Death Merchants who have many of us distracted with lies and dependent on the very systems making you sick! The world is more connected than ever, yet, loneliness is a worldwide epidemic. Many of us live in homes with other people and still feel lonely and isolated. Why is that? Because we’ve lost our sense of community.
II.) Radical Community Care
Community was LIFE for our ancestors, and for the remaining Indigenous (read: people who protect and love the Earth) peoples today who still understand the importance of community care. The New World cannot be built on the same pathologies that are destroying the current world. Nobody is self-made. Ever. It always takes two people to incarnate you into the this reality, and many people to raise you along the way into adulthood. Even if you had shitty parents or a horrible childhood, somehow, you survived to this point from the generosity of someone along the way. If you were in pure isolation, you would have been dead already.
One of the biggest traits I see in common among those who are chronically or terminally ill is LACK OF SUPPORT. Many of them share stories of how much they’ve had to take care of themselves without much support or help from others. Oftentimes, these same ailing people were usually caretakers for someone else in their life before they became sick. In other cases, the illness started after major life events such as trauma, toxin exposure, or some other life-changing circumstance. The recovery and healing process can almost always be predicted in those cases based on how much support they have, or rather, whether they are connected to a LOVING COMMUNITY.
Personally, I have experienced the power of community-based healing. During the time of quarantine, I remember feeling so isolated from my family and friends. I was on one side of the coast and most of my community lived hundreds of miles away. At first, it was nice having more quiet and stillness, but as months went by, the intensity of the isolation grew. I remember thinking how devastating it felt to fear hugging each other for concerns of getting sick or dying. It felt so unnatural to “socially distance” and yet I did it anyways to be safe and responsible. I was longing for social connection and felt at a lost for where to find it during the time where being social was literally considered shameful or a death sentence.
Luckily, I found a great virtual book club to connect with a community for sanity's sake. When I first joined, I still didn’t fully realize the negative impacts of isolation on me just yet, but some how, my subconscious knew to push me to join an online community. Later I recognized I joined for healing.
During one of my book club meetings, we were having vulnerable conversations about how we were collectively experiencing profound struggles. All of us were hurting in some way, and many of us were battling with our own health issues too. I remember the founder of the club gave an emotionally wrenching and empowering revelation about the power of community. She said, and I’m paraphrasing…
“You can’t truly heal without community. We can’t say we are about nature and indigenous traditions but then keep ourselves isolated from village. Village is why we are here and village is necessary to do the greatest healing work.”
I remember crying after hearing her words and being overfilled with the conviction of that spiritual wisdom. It pushed me to stop isolating myself and make a greater effort to be in community. Experiencing burnout also forced me to reevaluate my definition of success and happiness.
During that time of isolation, I made more money than I ever did prior, but I was miserable, exhausted, and trapped in a terrible cycle of workaholism. The isolation kept me from getting SARS, but on the other hand, I experienced new health issues that developed from the high stress and burnout. I had gained 20lbs and my bloodwork showed hormone imbalance, prediabetes, and mildly high cholesterol. I knew deep down I needed to break free from the fear of what would happen if I stopped putting all my time into business and work, and instead created more space for rest, community, and healing.
It wasn’t easy getting off the Hamster Wheel of Hell, but over the last three years, I have remained committed to securing myself more rest, community, and healing. When I first shifted into living with more ease, my income dropped significantly for a while, and that was scary AF. Now I had to evade the trap of poverty coming after me when I no longer subscribed to labor abuse. This is another reason why many stay on that hamster wheel, but the reality is, you either die on the wheel or find another way to live without the wheel.
One of the most human acts we can do is be creative. I used creativity to plan my new life and path to healing. I couldn’t do it alone, and knew I needed my community to carry me. For the first time in my life, I took a huge leap into the arms of my community to help me through difficult times. Thank God for family and a dear friend who offered monetary support, housing, and tons of prayers to keep afloat during very hard transitions of job hunting, business conversions, relocation, food insecurity, emotional breakdowns, and more!
Now, I’m pretty much on the other side of it all and my new life is better with each day. My health markers have returned to normal, but I’m still taking my time to recover and sustain my healing progress. New opportunities have arrived that allow me to work smarter and not harder. I’m living a softer and happier life where my needs are getting met with ease, and I’m here to tell you that all of this is available for you too.
The biggest shift to get me here happened in my mindset and soul in the same way that Gil Scott Heron stated:
The revolution will not be televised.
A revolutionary mindset is quintessential to recognize abuse is not love and success is not burnout. We deserve to experience a world where we can heal from any disease by changing our conditions. Even if the lies from the energy-harvesters/death merchants say it’s impossible for us to have it all, please know that Truth is the Light! Community care is possible and it is necessary!
The Gift of a Loving Village where we are all cared for, valued, guided, and prayed upon for the release of whatever blocks or hinders us is our best weapon to help us decolonize from systems that seek to exploit and destroy. If you feel lost, overwhelmed, or alone, please know that there is help and support awaiting you. It may not be obvious at times and it may take some searching, but the path to complete healing is not through little pills, isolation, or self-sacrifice. The real path to healing is through radical community care.
III.) The Role of Spirit in Community
Spirit is required in Community.
If there is no Spirit then the Community cannot heal. WE cannot heal.
The reason we must find community with the guidance of Spirit is to ensure we use proper discernment. Not every person you meet is your friend or want to see you succeed.
There is a Yoruba proverb I recently learned that cautions us to Beware of the rats while you sleep. I’ll explain what I mean…
There are the stealthy rats that feed on you gently by taking small nibbles and blowing on your wound while it feeds as to not wake you. These represent the people who claim to be your friend or care about you, but meanwhile, they insidiously use and abuse you. You’re so desperate for their love and support, despite them not really giving you any, that you reside to letting them exploit you anyways just so you’re not alone. These parasitic folks can feed off of you for months, even years, and in the end disappear and leave you with deep, painful wounds.
Then, there are the rats that feed ostentatiously. They are the ones with the audacity to bite the shit out of you and continue to feed even after you awake from the pain of the first bite. At first instinct, you’ll kick them off and try to keep an eye on their return. But they know at some point, you fall asleep again, and when you do, they will come back and bite your ass even harder. These are the overtly cruel parasitic people that you know you need to keep away from and watch out for, and yet, you fail to put in place the proper safeguards to snuff them out. They love to watch you in pain and have no qualms about openly destroying you. In some ways, I think these people are better than the latter because at least what you see is what you get. You know they are horrible and can’t say you didn’t know how dangerous they are, but somewhere along the way you learned to take pain from these individuals because it was previously normalized for you.
The point of the examples are to be clear that not all community is good community.
Beware of the rats that feed on you! They give you disease and not healing.
A good community is filled with Spirit, and will never seek to harm or exploit you. There is reciprocity and compassion.
The members value each other’s role and seek to ensure everyone is successful. When one is in pain, they are all in pain. A win for one is a win for all.
Rehabilitation and restorative justice are the initial interventions to correct social dysfunction - not imprisonment and killing.
Communal gardens serve as the community medicine. Nobody is left to struggle - never unhoused, never hungry, and never unsafe.
Service, morality, and ethics are valued more than materialism, money, and status.
The children belong to everyone and are treated as such - loved, protected, and nurtured by all.
This is what it means to have a Village. This is where healing lives.
Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.
~ Saint Jerome
Ultimately, you have to make a choice to be better, and stop staying stuck in the mediocre or worst reality. Recognize the lies and how our current communities are sick. The conventional systems we live in today are limited and destructive. We need to return to the “unconventional” (Sankofa) to obtain healing and expansion again.
If you’re done with being isolated, sick, and tired, then it’s time to cut the excuses and make space for Spirit. To connect with Spirit, we must reconnect with our inner-child, where we exist as our truest and purest Being. Only then can you actually attune to hear and learn what you need to ascend, as well as, obtain the discernment to find healing in Community. From there, we should all strive to make every day better, and if there is a bad day, know it won’t last. The key is to never give up!