We respond appropriately to an attack with a stress reaction. Our adrenaline is activated to help us deal with the threat - to fight or to flee.

When the attack is many miles away, and we only see and hear it through our TV and radio, we do not have to fight or flee, but we are left with our fight and flight responses fully activated - and no direct way to discharge these energies against the source of our stress.

This is how stress turns into distress. We remain frightened, angry and hurt.

When we have no direct outlets for our feelings, then our fears, angers and hurts may attach themselves to other targets. We may yell at the TV screen, vent our angers at someone nearby, or apply our energies towards fighting terrorists. This allows us some release and relief from the adrenaline tensions that build up inside us.

Very often, this is only a partially successful release of our stress reaction. Much of the stress and distress gets buried inside. Each of us ends up carrying a bucket with residues of fears, hurts and angers sloshing around inside. If another stress comes along, these residues may hitch a ride on our current emotional release. This bucketful of old, unvented feelings also makes us more ready to be triggered into anger and violence by any person or event that resonates with what is in our bucket.

Much of this process occurs outside of our conscious awareness, in a part of our mind that we call the "shadow." We may have no clue that the angers we are venting against a person of race or nationality different from our own are coming as much - or even more - from the bucket in our shadow rather than from that person.

How could we be so unaware of something inside us? This is because we let a child program our life's computer. The programs on the "hard drive" of our mind were installed by ourselves, when we were just coming into awareness of our place in the world. When we are one and two and three years old, we build this bucket inside us for stuffing away unpleasant feelings that are beyond our capacity to deal with. We can't leave or change whatever situations are unpleasant. So, rather than suffer, we shut away in this inner bucket the hurts and angers and fears that otherwise would be overwhelming. And we put a big sign over the bucket saying, "Keep away. Here hide tigers and monsters." This is the best we can do when we are little.

This works wonderously well. Our unconscious mind stands guard over the bucket and keeps it in the shadow - away from our conscious mind - so that we won't suffer from these bad feelings.

Unfortunately, these unconscious child programs stay with us when we grow up. Our inner computer goes on stuffing away unpleasant feelings, often on "automatic pilot," to keep us from suffering. The unconscious doesn't know that we might be able to handle these feelings in much better ways as adults. So we continue for much of our lives, managed by these shadow child programs, dealing with our feelings in little-child ways.

This can become a group or a national way of dealing with stress and distress.

Our personal pattern of venting our shadow bucket on those who are different from ourselves may resonate with our fellow citizens' buckets and shadows. This helps us to justify to ourselves that this is a good and right way of dealing with stresses - even when adult logic might suggest otherwise.

This pattern of group shadow may become institutionalized as hatreds of "others" who are different from ourselves. These "others" become convenient beating posts for angers we experience as a group or a nation. Blaming and attacking "others" gives us a vent for shadow feeling; it conveniently misdirects and deceives us into feeling we have more control over situations that are actually beyond our control. Blacks, Oriental, Native Americans and other minorities have been used in this way by Whites - giving Whites a feeling of superiority. Jews were used as scapegoats in this way in Germany - being blamed for economic and other problems.

People of dark skin and Middle Eastern appearance have been beaten and even killed in the aftermath of 9-11 by Americans who had no justification in fact for attacking these innocent residents in our country. These innocent victims had the misfortune of stirring the feelings in people who had full buckets and little awareness of their shadow processes.

These tactics are useful particularly when there are problems at home that have no ready solution - especially prior to an election.

It is frightening to consider that elected leaders of a country, who are supposed to represent the will and needs of the people, may manipulate the population for their own selfish political gain. But this is so and has been so for thousands of years.

How can we bring healing to these problems?

This section deals with how we bring healing to ourselves on many levels; how we work on our own shadow so that we are less vulnerable to being driven by the residues of unexpressed fears, hurts, angers and hatreds from within, and by the manipulations of self-interested leaders from without.

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind...

And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry.

Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.

How do I know?
For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar."

One world, many voices
One universe, many experiences
Share with me yourself
Touch me with your heart
Feel for a moment a common universe
Take longer than a moment to reflect, and know, we are all one
Your anger is in me, I may hide it
Your pain is in me, I may bury it
Your sorrow is in me, I may withdraw from it
Help me to see the world from your perspective
Help me to expand my point of view
Don't let me look away when the pain I touch in you touches the pain in me
I am here. I am witness that you exist.
I witness that your life has value and meaning.
We are all witness to each other's soul.
We are not good or bad, we are alive.
Let us find a way to allow every being to live.
One universe.
                                Kallie Kendle

From: The Healing Bridge Project Inc.

                   Next - Healing-acceptance of others