Enmeshment Within Individuals, Families And Society Leads To Disease

Anxiety, pain and revolution are the natural consequence of blurred boundaries and oppression of one member by another, indicators of a diseased system that is out of balance

Become a paid subscriber and join me Wednesdays from 8AM - 9AM PST for an hour of dialog and/or Q&A about the topics I write about every week.

Dear friends,

Perhaps it is because our US holiday - Thanksgiving - is coming up this week, and it is reminding me of incomplete family conflicts rooted in enmeshment…

Perhaps it is because earlier this year I chose to opt out of certain economic and political entanglements in order to devote myself to a new financial ideal that is in alignment with my conscience, and it is causing me a good deal of trepidation since this decision requires that I take real risks and step into the void of an uncertain future…

Perhaps it is because every time I go to the grocery store lately (where I walk away with a handful of items that cost me what an entire shopping cart would have a few years ago) I think about our modern fiat based economic system, and the blurred boundaries between corporate and political interests…

Whatever the reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about the entanglements that have hooked most of us into endless cycles of unsolvable conflict (pain and/or disease) - within our own minds and bodies; within our families and peer groups; within society; and between nations.

hook

a : a curved or bent device for catching, holding, or pulling
b : something intended to attract and ensnare

Being hooked is characterized by erratic and irrational reactivity to painful experiences, causing us to reach for relief by any means (sometimes through reflexive violence). We are not thinking clearly or seeing things as they are, and consequently we are easily ensnared in endless loops of misery.

The only way to get out of such patterns is to unhook ourselves; to think actively instead of passively, so we can see things as they are; and then to “put things in their rightful place.”

---

Pain and disease processes are a healthy response to an ecosystem whose members are out of balance.

Last week I wrote about the necessity of uniting all of our integral parts into an action that will be carried out by the whole for the purpose of working towards the highest and best vision of the future. I used walking as an example, pointing out the obvious: if your right and left leg are not working in unison, then you will not be able to walk.

If your legs lose the ability to distinguish themselves from each other, or if your left leg mistakes itself for your arm, then walking will be impossible. And if something is amiss in your ecosystem, then walking might be possible but it will probably be miserable.

What’s not so obvious is that most of us are walking around with precisely these kinds of inhibitions every day - and they are causing us untold levels of anxiety, gut issues, chronic pain, diseases, relationship challenges, financial difficulties and more.

Just like walking effortlessly can only be accomplished when all of the separate parts within our organism are allowed to articulate themselves as distinct elements that work cooperatively towards a goal that benefits the whole, each member of a family (or of a society, or of an economy) must also be able to articulate themselves as distinct elements whose unique gifts and talents contribute to the whole.

When each part or member of a “body” (a human body, the social body of a community, or the body politic) has a clearly defined role and is able to operate freely - unhindered and without interference by the other members - then the whole can function as a healthy organism.

If the parts or members become enmeshed, or the roles of each cease to be clearly defined - for example, if the fascia (boundary) separating your liver from your intestines becomes too thick or ruptures, or if members of a family deal with conflict via gossip or pretending everyone is fine when they’re not - then pain or disease processes will naturally ensue within the organism.

Within family systems and bodies like, boundaries are essential for ensuring that each individual member maintains autonomy and connection.

Healthy boundaries are neither too rigid nor too lax.

Healthy boundaries usher toxic elements out and keep the good ones in; they allow for the free flow of communication between members of an organism; and they ensure that every autonomous member has what it needs to express their genius and gift it back to the whole.

Lack of autonomous members who can operate freely and/or lack of boundaries is called enmeshment.

For example (and this is not meant as medical advice, it’s merely a thought exercise) - if your blood vessels are getting strangled by restricted or dehydrating fascia (which wraps all of your blood vessels), your body might develop “high blood pressure.” More pressure is needed within your blood vessels in order to move blood through your whole body. The high blood pressure is a GOOD thing - it’s your body’s wisdom dealing with adverse conditions. To set things right, you’d need to investigate why your fascia is strangling your blood vessels - and take care of the problem at the root.

We live in a culture that loves to throw pills and surgeries and all manner of quick fixes at these so-called “problems,” instead of learning from the processes themselves about the living system they’re embedded within.

Pain is a process. High blood pressure is a process. Anxiety is a process. Processes are are not stagnant or dead phenomenon that can be isolated from the living whole.

Social systems are no different.

If there is one person in a family system that dictates all the rules and dominates the social hierarchy, or if there is an insidious social pattern like avoiding conflict at all costs and banishing emotional pain from finding expression within the social organism, it affects everyone; and eventually there will be a revolt. That revolt could occur socially in the form of one or more members challenging the status quo, either forthrightly or violently; or it could come in the form of physical or mental illness, or patterns of chronic pain, within one or more members.

If we embraced the view that each human being is born with soul and spiritual characteristics that deserve to be nurtured in order to bring to fruition the unique gifts and talents of every individual; and if we considered the very real fact that for the whole of society to function optimally, every individual must be free to contribute those well nurtured gifts to a whole that values them - how differently would we structure society?

Pain and disease are necessary - they alert us to unhealthy boundaries and/or the suppression of one or more members due to the over dominance of others.

---

State, economic and cultural enmeshment = social disease.

Most of us are aware that we live in a world with corrupt economic and government powers. Sadly, we’ve normalized this knowledge.

What I want to highlight today is the insidious nature of enmeshment in the various “members” of the “social body” of humanity - and then I’ll point us toward the means to heal.

We’re dealing with 3 member organisms that make up modern societies:

✦ government (law)
✦ the economic system
✦ culture - the realm of spiritual life, education and personal development

During the industrial revolution, factory workers were needed to produce new technologies and machines: railroads, cars, electrical cables, light bulbs, washing machines, airplanes, guns etc. State regulated education emerged in the 1800’s to turn children into obedient factory workers who would be used to enrich all of the nations competing in the race to economic and military supremacy.

Enmeshment of state and corporate powers.

Thus began the great indoctrination program within our school systems, creating masses of people who think what they’re told to think, do what they’re told to do, and defend the status quo against anyone who questions its power or validity.

The most subversive and deeply wounding outcome of our modern educational system has been the suppression of the free human spirit and the impoverishment of our souls.

Materialistic science spelled the death of god, causing the human soul to languish without a spiritual home (culture) on earth where it can find itself in relationship to the social and divine whole.

Worse still, we’ve characterized the soul as nothing more than “the mind,” which most of science now defines as neurons and electrical impulses within the brain. We’ve reduced the human being to a machine, and with every passing decade we become sicker and sicker. Personally, I don’t believe this is a coincidence.

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fiat currencies were invented to fund World War I, ushering in the era of forever wars and the destruction of planetary and human health.

Fiat refers to paper (and today, digital) currencies backed by nothing of tangible value - like gold and silver - that are “printed” out of thin air by private bankers and loaned to governments, who promise that their citizens will pay the debt back via taxation - on pain of imprisonment if they do not comply.

Enmeshment of corporate interests and governments, with devastating consequences for humanity and the planet.

The fiat experiment was so lucrative for the military industrial complex during World War I that western governments, in collusion with the corporations that profit from war, adopted a permanent fiat system called central banking. They did this knowing full well that without consistent wars to perpetuate their existence, these currencies would immediately collapse.

I do not believe it is a coincidence that governments find or create boogie men and new enemies to fight every few years in order to justify yet another war that necessitates the printing of exponentially more “money,” creating a mountain of debt that will never, ever be paid back, and an economic system that is bound to collapse at any time.

✦ ✦ ✦

The first mission of the CIA (central intelligence agency) was Operation Paperclip, which ensured that Nazi scientists who had invented bio weapons that were tested on Jews were smuggled out of Germany ahead of the Nuremberg trials and given safe harbor in the United States. They were given new names and tax payer funded jobs with the mission of advancing their weapons technologies.

Encouraged to experiment on the American public, these scientists began releasing all kinds of different chemical and biological agents into airports and subways across the country.

Today, the CIA spends roughly $10B (billion) per year to fund media campaigns in order to propagandize the US population, and they are legally allowed to do so.

Enmeshment of undisclosed private interests, clandestine government operatives, economics and culture.

✦ ✦ ✦

Academies of higher learning (colleges) are so enmeshed with the state and corporate interests it’s hard to find any boundary at all.

For example: medical students learn about so called diseases from research studies funded by pharmaceutical companies who profit from the drugs they produce to treat the exact “diseases” these scientists supposedly studied with unbiased scientific rigor; then, these same companies lobby the government to mandate their products to children and adults alike; or they bribe doctors to prescribe their company’s drugs over their competition’s, offering them paid “working” vacations (where company reps “educate” the doctors about the diseases that these drugs supposedly cure, and offer them huge financial incentives to prescribe their company’s drugs to their patients).

Most of the jobs that graduates can apply for involve enmeshment with these same government and corporate interests. To become a doctor, you have to get a state license; and you better obey the state rules governing your profession, or you may lose your license.

Or there’s the fact that scientists who help to invent new drugs and vaccines are promised royalties in perpetuity on all sales of that drug/vaccine; in perpetuity means not just for his or her lifetime, but for the lifetimes of his children and children’s children - forever.

And on and on, ad nauseum - these enmeshment infiltrate every aspect of modern life.

---

How do we “put things in their rightful place?”

Social traumas are expressed in millions of human bodies as chronic pain and disease because we don’t know how to resolve our emotional conflicts where they belong - in the social realm.

Many social conflicts, when examined with objectivity, are rooted in economic and spiritual oppression and suppression.

To truly “put things in their rightful place” we would need to separate governments from the economic system, and both of these from the cultural realm - which would tend to our spiritual and practical education and development.

Can you even imagine a world in which the state played no role whatsoever in education or the economy, and indeed was prohibited from even attempting to interfere in these domains because of strictly enforced societal boundaries?

I can, and it would be so wonderful. I want to live in that world!

Sadly, most people have been so thoroughly indoctrinated by state controlled educational institutions that they will immediately defend the status quo without even pausing to think about who or what they are defending; which is not unlike the ways that some family members will quickly defend the unhealthy enmeshment patterns in a social system that is the only one they’ve ever belonged to.

Many others get hooked into blaming or fighting “the system” - instead of getting to work building new ones.

In order to heal, we actually have to imagine our ideal ______ (body, relationship, family, society, world).

And we have to believe with our whole being that our ideals are practically possible for us to bring into being.

Only an inspiring vision combined with this level of faith will move us out of our spiritual malaise.

Only then will we have the courage to unhook ourselves from these unhealthy enmeshment patterns.

Unfettered, we can then take action to establish a healthier_______ (body, relationship, family, society, world).

These concepts present us with many paradoxes. Here are two:

1. What does it mean for each individual member - within one human body, or the whole social body of humanity - to be “free,” when their role is to contribute to the health of the whole?
   
   One thing it does NOT mean is that any single member will be allowed (in the long run) to behave in a domineering manner, thereby suppressing other members; whenever this happens over a long enough period, pain and revolution will occur in an attempt to correct the imbalance.

2. Every individual element or member of an organism, just like the organism as a whole, is going through an evolutionary process.
   
   Periods of chaos and pain are necessary catalysts for evolution.

I’d love to discuss these concepts with you during this week’s live Zoom session for paid subscribers. We’re meeting Wednesdays at 8AM PST.

If you want to join us, you can sign up here. I’ll be sending the Zoom link Tuesday.

Otherwise, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

With love,
Elisha

P.S. I highly recommend reading “Renewal Of The Social Organism” - a series of articles written by Rudolf Steiner after World War I urging humanity to separate these three members of society. His warnings went unheeded, and we are living through the consequences.

The articles in this book were a primary impetus behind the formation of The Human Freedom Project. While reading them (I have a hard copy and I’ve read it at least 10 times now) I found so many answers I was looking for about the true origins of pain and disease in human beings. The profound insights and clear thinking articulated by Steiner are often the inspiration behind my weekly letters - even though I constantly feel that I hardly do his work justice.