The Global Iceberg

If you haven’t read about ”The Personal Iceberg” I suggest you do that before you read about this iceberg. ”The Personal Iceberg” is described in detail on this website.

I drew The Personal Iceberg sometime in 1989 and over the years I taught this to all my students. I drew it on blackboards and flip overs first in Australia and New Zealand and later in Denmark, and the iceberg became a kind of trademark for Bodymind Institute. It was an easy model to understand and use when my students wanted to become more conscious as to how old programs were affecting their behaviour patterns.

In 2004 I had an amazing experience. I woke up very early one morning and could instantly SEE how my old iceberg could be used to understand and explain basically everything that I saw happening everywhere around me: What happens in families when conflict arises – what happens politically in a community – and in the whole World! Suddenly there were other icebergs – with all the things I constantly saw happening globally – and things that I see happening more and more.

1. The Visible Layer

Worldwide recession

Environmental changes

Conflict - Corruption

Injustices and Exploitation

The first and visible layer represents the global state of health – ”The Symptom” –

just like our state of health in the Personal Iceberg. Everyone can see what is happening in this top layer of the Iceberg. This is the visible part of reality:

”Something is wrong in the world!”

We see the old ways collapsing all over the world, and we talk about it and share our opinions. In Denmark we have an old expression ”Let fall what cannot stand” – and maybe this old ”truth” is a very realistic truth at this time. But what can we do about it?

When I look at what is happening – here in my own country, in Europe and in the rest of the world – it seems as if the next layer of the iceberg (”Our Lifestyle” in the Personal Iceberg) here points in two directions:

First of all, that some of us are living in a not so healthy way – not to say in extreme ways in all respects – while other people are starving and have nothing.

And secondly, what I see is that the layer where solutions are attempted is in a totally unrealistic layer of the iceberg – the second layer - just as in the Personal Iceberg we might try to drink more water – that’s healthy! – in order to stop our arthritis or depression!

In the Global Iceberg it seems that most of what is attempted here is all about band-aids – and that no real solutions are achieved.

1. The Visible layer

2. Attempts to solve Conflicts

in a totally unrealistic layer

will only amount to band-aids –

with no lasting solutions

No, whole and lasting solutions can never be achieved if we try to solve anything in this layer, ignoring the two bottom layers that are the most important! If we want things to change to the better – the much better – we are not going to find the solutions in the first layers of the iceberg. That’s where all the band-aids live – and that’s what we have mostly been trying to do for centuries. Remember also, that we are under the surface of the water here, so we don’t see clearly enough – especially what lies down in the deepest waters.

The next layer in the Iceberg has to do with feelings and emotions. We might also call this the ”human layer” in the Global Iceberg, because the world is populated by human beings of a multitude of varieties and cultures. This is also a conflict layer - and when in conflict humans mostly operate from fear, hate, anger, resentment, frustration, feelings of revenge and grief! We see this all over the world right now – more and more.

1. The Visible Layer

2. Attempts to solve Conflicts

3. Feelings and Emotions - also a Conflict-layer

Feelings of Fear – Hate – Anger

Resentment – Frustration - Revenge

Grief - Sadness – Despair

So something here is not being addressed – and how can we – as long as we are all more or less still tied up in these big feelings and emotions. So is change totally hopeless? Are we stuck with things as they are? Sounds pretty depressive?

Stay with me, because there are new things happening in the very bottom layer of the Global Iceberg.

1. The Visible Layer

2. Attempts to solve Conflicts

3. Feelings and Emotions - also a Conflict-layer

4. Values, Attitudes, Beliefs

This layer shows all the reasons

that things are the way they are!

(Read more about this in The Personal Iceberg)

This layer is very similar to the fourth layer in the Personal Iceberg – simply because we are still more or less the same people that we have been for centuries. Our ways of thinking and reacting have been carried over from generation to generation – so here lives the Old Paradigm of the ways we still think and react. Here lives all the things we believe in – the values we cherish – and the various antagonisms that we have. All our thought-patterns and all our habitual ways of living - and the way we see ourself and the World around us.

In order to see this fourth layer of the Global Iceberg differently, we can no longer use the old ways of examining anything at all. I think if we could, it would have been done years ago. Maybe we can’t use any of our ”old” senses at all anymore. Maybe we need to inhabit other senses that we are not that used to using – for example our heart?

I believe that a Paradigm shift must come from within each and every one of us – and that it will happen when we become totally aware of what we think and what we feel - and when we dare to be totally honest with ourselves.

We are all a part of this World – so we are all equally responsible for the outcome.

Let us start from the deepest level and begin

to operate from other Values, Attitudes, Beliefs:

Heart-based Communication - Cooperation

Neuro Intelligence - Global Consciousness

Let us come from the Inside-Out and go from Ego to Unity

Over the recent years new sciences have been explored and proven true.

Neuroscience tells us that the days of Darwin are over and we are long into Einstein time. That we have spent too many years if not centuries in the age of competition, and that new times (our ”now-time”) must concentrate on cooperation – in every cranny of our universe - in order for our species to survive in future.

There are many new tones to our old music out there. We now know that all the cells in our body must cooperate – otherwise we get sick. The same in a society – otherwise we get a sick society. And the World? – How sick has the World already become?

I know that we can do lots of things in order to get our own cells to cooperate in better ways. Maybe a lot of us could also do something within our own society if we knew how, and if we had a network og like-minded people to support each other’s ideas. And the World? – Well, that’s a big one, isn’t it. But there are people and organizations that are right into all this. An organization like HeartMath is doing wonders, both scientifically and in support of all the latest knowledge of ”Heart Coherence” and free teleseminars that anyone can sign up for and listen to. You can easily find HeartMath on the Internet – and you can look for other organizations that also have lots of free information. And there are wonderful videos of people like Gregg Braden, easily found on youtube and other places.

I recently read again an old book ”Ecstasy” by Robert A. Johnson and he writes:

”The tribal people will exert all the power they can muster to effect change on an unconscious level. A modern people will completely bypass the unconscious, because for them it is not ”real”. As a result we tend to make changes that are expedient but not necessarily prudent. Because we consider only our immediate needs, and not the needs of the whole system, we have no idea what unconscious forces we are setting into motion and what the long-term consequences of our actions will be.”

I first read this book back in the late 80s I think – so much of this information has been there for many years. It’s high time that we all see it – this bigger picture – and do what each of us can do to act on it. My excuses for not acting before sounds a bit like ”But I’m from an older generation– the world wasn’t like that back then – and we wouldn’t have known what to do about it anyway – and all this information wasn’t out there then”. But it was – and a lot of us knew about it. We just held back and didn’t speak loudly enough.

We are told again and again from many sources that time is running out – that we are getting close to Zero Time. So – ”Now is the time – are we the People?”

Let us use all the information there is today and move to Neuro Intelligence - and do things better! Let all us people-that-probably-don’t-know-what-to-do-about-it join forces anyway. Let us at least create our own healing – and maybe the healing of our societies – and eventually the World.

There are many good things happening out there, and if you are one of the people who have absolutely no idea what you can do about all the things you see and hear and don’t like, then I want to tell you about just one thing that is easy, free and truly effective: An international organization called AVAAZ (avaaz means "voice") is stopping many, many injustices all over the World. There are 25 million Avaaz’ers out there now – increasing by 1 million people each month at the moment (while I am writing this August 2013). All we have to do is click our ”NO” on the computer to anything we don’t want happening in the World. Find out how and why on www.avaaz.org

This is ”People Power” – individual people all over the world joining forces – not confined to certain political parties or religions. And ”when Hearts join forces” miracles happen.

Just imagine how many Happy Cells we can count on here to help make a Happy World!

So yes, there is lots of hope for the World – we just need to show up – at least on our computer.