Promoting a Sense of Oneness Simple Rule #7: Address Spiritual Empowerment

Simple Rule #7 is to promote spiritual empowerment

New paradigm science has given us a beautiful understanding of the positive possibilities that can emerge through system unity or a sense of oneness. Since we were unaware that a small change in one part of a larger complex adaptive system promotes change in the entire system, old paradigm research studies that actually led to positive outcomes were often not repeated. Since we were unaware that a small change in one part of a larger complex adaptive system promotes change in the entire system, old paradigm research studies that actually led to negative outcomes were often undeservedly repeated. The creative potential of promoting positive change through the use of sets of well-targeted simple rules is promising and empowering for us all.

New paradigm science is changing our understanding of academic research as we leave behind an old scientific paradigm that allowed for the illusion that complex adaptive systems stopped self-organizing when we stopped watching them. For that reason, much research was produced that “proved” the promise of intervention strategies that created positive short-term outcomes, but failed the test of time. These areas of old paradigm research are continuing to slow forward momentum in education, social services, and mental healthcare.

Spiritual empowerment is another word for resilience and it is far more important than we realized when we were depending on short-term solutions in areas such as education, social services, and mental healthcare. Strategies designed to enhance resilience require us to watch a child’s, a citizen’s, or a mental healthcare client’s patterns of change over a longer period of time. Thought, feeling, and behavior patterns tend to be cyclic and are deeply rooted in our amygdala memories. Old paradigm science allowed us to fool ourselves into believing one-size-fits-all methods of changing those patterns were far more effective than they ever really were.

Educators, social workers, and mental healthcare professionals have been learning about the importance of moving past authoritarian approaches for decades. One of my favorite sayings from the early days of that movement was, “telling isn’t teaching,” but we still see approaches used in all three areas that are based on the idea that we can change thoughts, feelings, and behaviors through the use of words alone. In this way, we also still see approaches used in all three areas that don’t consider personal life experience. The new scientific paradigm is here and it is time for education, social services, and mental healthcare to embrace its promising possibilities.

Our new paradigm understanding of amygdala memories finally provides us with a science that allows these three service areas to benefit from new growth and development. Oneness is now more than a word as we have science that proves how powerful each of our unconscious perceptions are and why it is important to promote resilience in students, citizens, and mental healthcare clients. We are all still dealing with the negative and often unfair influences of good vs. bad perceptions in our lives. Spiritual empowerment or resilience is the key to continuing on a positive life course that we believe in when everyone around us tells us it is time to give up.

We now understand that in our dualistic amygdala memories “self” and “other” will always be in a battle for survival. We now understand that our own life experience will override logic and perceptually biased assumptions will continue. This means that students, citizens, and mental healthcare clients will continue to have perceptually biased assumptions. However, this also means that teachers, social workers, and mental healthcare professionals will continue to have perceptually biased assumptions.

We will all continue to have perceptually biased assumptions that we won’t recognize until after unjust words are spoken or unfair decisions are made.  We will all tend to have times in our lives when we feel like we are playing an unwinnable game. Simple Rule #7 is to promote spiritual empowerment because by promoting spiritual empowerment we are helping everyone develop more positive amygdala memories through an increase in hopeful and less divisive exchanges.