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 Soulution
-- The Holistic Manifesto
Edge Life interview with William Bloom
First of a two parts
by Tim Miejan
William Bloom is one of the U.K.'s most experienced teachers, healers and authors
in the field of holistic development. His work has helped thousands of people. His
mainstream career includes a doctorate in psychology, teaching, 10 years working
with adults and adolescents with special needs, and delivering hundreds of trainings.
His holistic background includes a two-year spiritual retreat living amongst the
Saharan Berbers in the High Atlas mountains, 30 years on the faculty of the Findhorn
Foundation, and co-founder and director for 10 years of the St. James's Church Alternatives
Program in London.
He is a meditation master and his books include the seminal The Endorphin Effect,
Working with Angels, Feeling Safe and Psychic Protection - and most recently Soulution:
The Holistic Manifesto.
In 1999, he founded Holistic Partnerships, an educational and training consultancy
that particularly works with the material of the Endorphin Effect -- a set of strategies
based on his research into mind-body medicine and holistic healthcare. He is director
of The Holism Network.
He spoke with Edge Life by phone from his home in Glastonbury, England.
I certainly enjoyed your book, and as one human being of the species, I'm glad you
did it.
William Bloom: Well, thank you, I had steam popping out my ears when I was doing
it, trying to put all the threads together.
I understand that your entire book is devoted to bringing into focus the nature of
Holism. For those not entirely sure what it is, how would you define Holism?
Bloom: In the most general way, it's a great name for contemporary spirituality and,
for me at any rate, contemporary spirituality is open-hearted, open-minded, inclusive,
sees the connections and interdependence of everything and recognizes that all life
is sacred. Holism, of course, derives from the Greek "holos," meaning "whole,"
and it's being commonly used in health care, local government, social work, therapy,
community building and the environmental movement to describe a general attitude
that sees that all the bits and pieces of any entity in actual fact are connected
and when they're connected they make more than just the sum of the parts.
Within that there's another meaning that comes from the guy who actually invented
the word, the South African statesman John Smuts, who recognized that nature is continually
growing and emerging with new elements, all of which somehow or other manage to combine
together to create the forms of life as we see them, whether they're trees or galaxies
-- and this insight has been repeated recently in chaos theory and emergence theory.
You make the assertion that Holism will be the major form of world spirituality over
the coming years. Why?
Bloom: Looking at what's happening to culture generally, it's obvious that old forms
of the traditional sects will need to either fall away or adapt, and in a multicultural
world that is free-flowing, networked and full of planetary information, it's no
longer possible for any faith to claim to have the whole truth.
It's immature and it's a denial of the facts and, worse than that, it's actually
insulting to all the other world's faiths. So, anybody who is brought up in the modern
world has an awareness that there are many faiths, many paths, many types of circumstance
that take people into spirituality, that take people into spiritual experience.
And all across the world, regardless of the culture or the faith, people have the
same experience, which is described in words such as "connection," "oneness,"
"harmony," "love" and "essence." There are statistics
from various sources to justify the claim that this new spirituality, by the very
nature of the way global culture is changing, is bound to be inclusive, multidimensional,
respectful of individual experience, seeing the core essence of the traditional faiths,
but at the same time moving on from them. It's inevitable that this becomes the predominant
form of spirituality.
I know that people will look at the evangelical movements and suggest that this is
an evidence to the contrary, but I think they're noticing that the glass is half
empty, rather than the glass is half full -- that a movement away from evangelical
forms of fundamentalist faith towards something that's more open-hearted and inclusive
has been phenomenally substantial. If you've looked at the television habits of all
the American evangelical fundamentalist types who, for example, have been the backbone
of Bush's electorate, I think you'll find that in their viewing habits they're very
familiar with the kind of ideas that come across on the Oprah show, and in the privacy
of their homes they're far more open-hearted and open-minded than they may be when
they're out in their political communities and religious communities.
Showing one face to the public and having a different one privately.
Bloom: Yes, I think so. They're watching Oprah. They're watching the programs on
psychism. They're watching programs on reincarnation.
While I was reading your book, it seemed to me that there have always been holistic
thinkers and philosophers, but now it seems that such thought is becoming seeded
in our culture. How widespread is Holism embraced worldwide and to what degree has
it seeped into our institutions?
Bloom: You're absolutely right that the core beliefs and assumptions of Holism or
contemporary spirituality are not, as such, new. They've always been held by tribal
peoples and by philosophers, and mystics in general, who have this sense of interdependence
and connection. All we're saying now is that as traditional authoritarian religion
melts away, this more essential and nature-based and connected sense of spirituality
is liberated for everyone.
In general, surveys show that huge numbers of people, up to 60-70 percent of democratized
nation's peoples, have adopted a more open-minded and open-hearted spirituality.
But, what has not happened, it has not been named as a common culture. People who
have those beliefs and that sense of interdependence haven't yet recognized that
they're part of this huge movement. The holistic movement is simply trying to articulate
it. Holism may not, in the end, be the right word for it, but there is this huge
need for an articulation.
In Norway, for example, Holism has been given state recognition as a faith community.
I can't speak for the United States, but in general I can speak for what's happening
in Britain and a little bit for Norway and Scandinavia. In Britain there's a huge
acceptance that there is this new form of spirituality and that it's important. In
the British education system, unlike America, religion is part of the curriculum.
There's recently been a policy ruling that spirituality in its widest sense needs
to be integrated across the curriculum.
That's incredible!
Bloom: In the National Health Service, particularly in Scotland, there's an awareness
that spirituality is hugely important in healing and convalescence. One of the things
they notice is that spirituality helps. It's a good approach for nurses and doctors
and a source of huge help for patients, so there's a general mood in this county
that a holistic approach to spirituality is good and emerging.
The biggest problem, which I think is probably the same as in America, is that it's
also become appropriated by commercial forces. There's a huge amount of New Age gizmology
-- that you can create total personal fulfillment and perfect health in a half an
hour if you just do this or wear this, with little appreciation of the much deeper
needs and dynamics of personal development. I'm worried about the commercialization
of it.
When you were talking about the movement of Holism, it seems to parallel exactly
with what Paul Ray and the Cultural Creative model is talking about, the fact that
there are millions of people who have this way of being, but they've not been identified.
Bloom: That's right. Because we're a network of people, and because of our awareness,
we also tend to be suspicious of any kind of centralizing or unifying dynamic. I
think that's a very healthy suspicion. In the U.K., a few of us have decided that
suspicion or suspiciousness shouldn't stop us from networking, so that we represent
an open-hearted approach on any decision-making body where other faith communities
are represented.
In the U.K., school boards, hospitals, various civic entities are supposed to have
representatives of local faith communities on them, putting forth their perspective
and influencing their decisions. It's become clear for a lot of us that we need to
have -- let's call ourselves Holists, just for the sake of the word -- Holists on
those boards, as well.
That's excellent.
Bloom: And it's crucially important in all kinds of areas. For example, in a hospital
or a school where there are teachers or directors who are seeking to bring in a more
holistic attitude, they need the support of people on the governing bodies. If people
like us don't actually mobilize and become engaged citizens, how else will our ideas
manifest?
In health care here, there are some hospitals who independently decide to adopt a
holistic model, but it's not something that you see widespread across the system.
Bloom: It's not widespread here, either. For instance, my wife Sabrina, went in for
an endoscopy, a procedure where they send a little camera down your throat to look
in the stomach. It's uncomfortable and you gag and maybe go into feelings of panic,
right? This is a totally ordinary hospital, right? And there was this guy, half nurse,
half porter who had her in the wheelchair and was whispering in her ear, "Don't
worry. Just breathe. Focus down into your body. I'm here with you. When the tube
goes into your throat, you'll notice a sensation of gagging. Notice it as philosophically
as you can. Don't get frightened. Just breathe. Keep breathing and you'll be OK,
and I'll be there holding your hand."
He was typical, I think, of the hundreds of thousands of people who've absorbed all
the kind of stuff that we were pushing 20 years ago. There are waves of best-selling
books about communication skills and relaxation and all the rest of it that have
landed in the general culture. That guy in the hospital and all the people who have
a similar attitude need support, to have somebody on the governing body who's prepared
to say, "This is what works in the long term, these kinds of attitudes."
What's the danger that Holism can become as fractured as other movements in the past?
Bloom: That's a great question as well, isn't it? That keeps getting put to me. One
friend of mine said we can succeed if we keep to the networking model and if we keep
to a fairly rigorous practice of self-reflection and if we keep to a very strong
mantra of "we might be wrong." We welcome new ideas. We welcome conflicting
opinions. We'd rather poke our eyes out than create another authoritarian structure.
Can Holism be the result of our collective opening of our eyes to the unity in our
dimension and interpreting the unity that we see? I mean, looking at us as a collective
being, perhaps we are opening our eyes a little bit now?
Bloom: If you're taking this conversation through a gateway into something that's
more collective or mystical...based on a private meditation practice that I've had
for decades, I feel that what you are saying is right. That it's the manifestation
of a collective awakening from slumber.
But, I'm not yet confident that this awakening is going to fulfill itself, because
I see so many people getting on the bandwagon and either making a fast buck out of
it or getting conned into thinking that personal fulfillment is the most important
dynamic and can be easily achieved.
Those two factors concern me -- and I'm also concerned by those who preach environmental
values and yet don't walk their talk. And I'm also concerned about the people who
preach prosperity consciousness and reality creation, but are not acting generous.
Because they're more public and it seems like they are the spokesman for the movement,
when they're not.
Bloom: No, they're not, because they're not expressing its core values. But given
that, I think it's a collective awakening, but those of us who are conscious within
it, we need to get more rigorous about our own spiritual practice and our own engaged
citizenship. I think we need to become more rigorous about the level of self-awareness
and compassionate witnessing that we practice, and I think we need to stretch beyond
our comfort zone to a less-glamorous cause and live in less-glamorous houses, right?
How is a holistic being to cope in a society that seems to stand for all the opposite
values?
Bloom: It helps if one has a daily practice of connecting to the beauty of nature
and the universe, and if one's basic attitude is optimistic, and if one stands as
a strong island of integrity. You pay your extra 10 cents for an ecological cleaner
and you have to scrub a bit harder, right?
You have the sense of integrity. And you nag your neighbors. I mean the thing I'm
strongest on in the U.K. in the moment is if you hang out in a bar or a coffee bar,
be talking about this stuff.
"What are you interested in?"
"I'm interested in contemporary spirituality."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that the whole world, the universe, is beautiful and mysterious. Nature
is wonderful and we need to behave in a way that keeps it all running."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, I mean stop buying crap."
And you can have conversations like this in a bar. I think we're shy. I think holistically
minded people tend to be diffident, you know?
Next month: The Earth Charter and where we go from here.
For more info, visit www.holism.info or www.williambloom.com
Tim Miejan is editor of Edge Life magazine. Contact him at (651) 578-8969, toll-free
1 (888) 776-5687 or e-mail editor@edgelife.net
Copyright © 2005 Tim Miejan, all rights reserved. |
| June 2005 |
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