Survival of the Successfully Bonded

Darwin's "survival of the fittest" is rugged individualism taken to the species level. It sponsors a profoundly competitive view of life on Earth and reality itself. For this person or species to win, another must lose. Even our bodily organs, which are supposed to cooperate, mainstream medicine heals (supposedly) in isolation.

These days, however, a couple of revolutions are challenging this older view.

What's emerging is a wider truth that is both miraculous and daunting. In so many cases, equally powerful actors in how and why things evolve are not individuals at all—but very rich and complex networks, whole systems. It's more like, "survival of the successfully bonded." How does this change the way you see yourself and your health?

DNA's Not in Control

To begin with, "genes as destiny" has failed to turn out as planned. A vast array of epigenetic "switches" around genes can and does turn them on and off singly and in different combinations. Your particular good or bad genes may or may not ever activate. And these switches are in various ways both heritable and sensitive to what's happening around you. Increasingly, research indicates they can even be affected by your moods and thoughts.

Transmission via these epigenetic switches is one of the ways unresolved trauma in your ancestors can live on in you, even though you personally never experienced it. You remain an expression of a family system, or "soul," that is continuous across generations. Descendents of holocaust survivors, for instance, can find themselves repeatedly victimized. Children in the wombs of 9/11 survivors were shown to be prone later to PTSD.

Family Energetics--Help for Bad Bonding

Fortunately, simple, low-tech, accessible tools like Systemic Constellations and Family Energetics have also emerged. They can help you sort out whose fate is whose in these bonded groups and thereby clear inherited trauma. But the point is—wellness for you can sometimes best arise by looking at and working with this whole family system.

Again, it's survival of the successfully bonded. Simply rejecting your ancestral system doesn't clear you. Accepting and changing the nature of the bonds helps not only you, but the rest of the family.

But something both much smaller and much larger is profoundly changed our picture of life.

The Human "Microbiome"--Your Own Bacterial Ecosystem

Secondly, if you collapse the whole history of planet earth into one year, we got here 30 seconds ago, and bacteria arrived in March. There are at least as many or possibly substantially more bacterial cells in your body than the ones that make up "you." Plant and animal life evolved within and dependent upon a vast sea of bacterial ecosystems. Yes that means you too.

So guess what—our idea that we should make everything antiseptically "germ free" would, if we could do it, destroy not just you, but all of life on earth. Only a miniscule fraction of microbes are harmful to us. Many, many more are essential partners.

The parade of species found to be relying on bacteria for crucial parts of their machinery of life is becoming endless. And not just things like digesting otherwise inedible foods or accomplishing photosynthesis. The very development of crucial organs in plants and animals happens often only via cooperation between host cells and resident bacteria. Bobtail squid develop light emitting organs by building little capsules for bacteria that glow.

Your immune system is driven by a vast ecosystem of bacteria in your gut. If you are born naturally, you get your starter package of microbes while passing through your mother's vagina. And that starter package gets special sustenance from your own Mom's breast milk (only). But with a C-section, your gut starts out handicapped. Bottle-fed, to boot—and the handicap increases.

Bacteria Can Share Useful DNA Directly--Best to Get Them on our Side

Perhaps most amazing is the fact that bacteria engage in "horizontal gene transfer." They share snippets of DNA across contemporary populations. "Hey! I've got this gene that neutralizes this poison. Here, try it out!" Microbes ability to evolve quickly in the face of challenges dwarfs our own. Of course this means antibiotic-resistant strains of disease causing microbes are soon to be among us. Don't take antibiotics frivolously.

As I said, this wider view of life is both miraculous and daunting. A bit scary even. So let's shift away from leading edge science into the paranormal. Dr. Dan Benor, a pioneer energy psychologist, asked a number of psychics to feel into the consciousness of the bacterial realm. Several reported that our own human microbiome was very much trying to help us adopt healthier ways. So Dan asked them, via the psychics, about maybe going on strike for a day to help us wake up. "We can't do that," they answered. "It would be unethical."

Maybe, if we begin cooperating with the planet, we can get on the benevolent side of the actually dominant life form on Earth. Because it's not us.