Love Maine Radio #308: Elizabeth McLellan + Robert Atkinson

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 308, airing for the first time on Sunday, August 13, 2017. Today's guests include Elizabeth McClell, the founder and president of Partners for World Health, and Robert Atkinson, author of the Story of Our From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

who is the founder and president of Partners for World Health and who has spent her career working in nursing and healthcare administration. Thanks so much for coming in.

Elizabeth McLellan:

It's great to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Partners for World Health. You've been doing a lot of work over the last 10 years. Talk to me about your organization and what you're doing.

Elizabeth McLellan:

So Partners for World Health is an organization that I started in 2007 and collecting discarded medical supplies from hospitals here in the Portland area. And in about a year and a half I had about 11,000 pounds of discarded medical supplies located in my house before I moved it to its first warehouse. So our mission is to collect the discarded medical supplies and reprocess them, repackage them, and then ship them to various hospitals and clinics in Africa, the Middle east and Southeast Asia. In addition, we also run medical missions in Bangladesh, Uganda, Senegal, Cameroon and Turkey to take care of the Syrian refugees.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been in this working in this area, in the Portland area for quite some time. How did you get involved with World Health? Why did this show up on your radar screen?

Elizabeth McLellan:

Well, I spent many years living in the Middle east working in Saudi Arabia for the Arab American oil company in the nursing administration there. And I had the opportunity to travel all over Northern Africa, the Middle east and Southeast Asia and visited hospitals and met various people in the healthcare industry, only to realize that they didn't have any medical supplies or not enough medical supplies. So I decided when I came home that I was going to begin that effort at carrying them and acquiring them and then packing them up in my suitcases and traveling two or three times a year to different places in the world to deliver these supplies. And one thing led to another, and when I was working in nursing administration at Maine Medical Center, I decided to start collecting them and just put a few bins out at various units. And one thing's led to another so that now we have four warehouses here in the state of Maine and one coming on board in Burlington, Vermont for University of Vermont Medical Center. So it's really grown.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You also spend a lot of time working with nursing students and students in the allied health professions. So it's not just bringing the supplies over, you're actually bringing people over with you.

Elizabeth McLellan:

Well, in our medical mission program, we bring doctors, nurses, nursing students, medical students and other healthcare professionals to provide either surgery or primary health care or community wide education. But predominantly our workforce at Partners for World Health is a volunteer effort. I'm a volunteer. I'm not paid for anything. We have a bookkeeper for 15 hours a week. That's the only, currently the only paid employee. And we're hoping to hire in the next couple of months a program director for our distribution center, which is where most of the small things come in, like bandages and dressings and catheters and needles and syringes. And also hire a volunteer coordinator so that we can expand our workforce. We could use 25 volunteers a day, five days a week, in order to process all the medical supplies that are coming in from all over the state of Maine, from New Hampshire, Vermont, and five hospitals in Boston.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

These medical supplies, even though they're technically used, they're not really used. There's a lot of waste that actually takes place within the medical system.

Elizabeth McLellan:

Right. But these are some medical supplies. Like our other warehouse here in Portland, we have two locations, one on Cancer Road, which is our shipping center. And that's the place where all of the beds, the wheelchairs, the walkers, the crutches, all of the biomedical equipment are stored. For example, EKG machines, defibrillators, anesthesia machines, incubators may have been used, but they have an extended life. And we have them checked by our medical volunteer biomedical people to make sure that they're in good working order before we ship them. Other medical supplies can come in that have never even been used, that might still be in the original package, like dressing supplies and, and fully catheter supplies and many other items that are in the package, some items are coming in, like as adult diapers that might have been opened, but only one or two were used, and then the rest are still in the package. So we have to go through everything to reprocess it and repackage it to make it acceptable for shipping.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Are there different regulations that you have to deal with depending upon the countries that you're sending things to?

Elizabeth McLellan:

Oh yes, there are many, many regulations depending upon the country. For example, in Uganda, to ship a medical container 40ft long that would hold about 12,000 pounds of medical supplies involves a pre inspection. Here in the United States, in addition, you have to change all the electrical cords, put an adapter on them, and provide a mini transformer for every electrical piece of equipment. We ship a container load of 12,000 to 15,000 pounds once a month out of Portland, out of our shipping center, and the next one leaves tomorrow on 21 June to head for Syria. Now, Syria doesn't really require a lot, doesn't require a pre inspection, also doesn't require that transformers be sent. But a variety of different regulations are implemented in different countries, all depending on what their rules and regulations are. But predominantly most of them require that you do not send expired items. So we have to check all of the items that come in. For example, a 4x4 gauze could have an expiration date on it of August 2016. And that means in our reality in the United States, in our healthcare system, that it's expired and we cannot use it. But what we do is take it out of the package and then repackage it in a Ziploc bag and send it as non sterile gauze. So we always try to find another alternative way of repackaging it and sending it so it doesn't end up in the dump. So if you were to come and visit our distribution center, which is at 40 Waltz Drive, you would see huge space of 15,000 square feet of boxes and bags of medical supplies that have been discarded from nursing homes, hospitals, private individuals, and all of that needs to be reprocessed.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is it about your background in nursing administration that made you so interested in the logistics of this process?

Elizabeth McLellan:

Well, there are many logistics in this process and it's not anything that I learned while I was in nursing school or graduate school. Absolutely nothing. So it's really been learning by the seat of your pants and trying to figure it out, which is something that we do learn in nursing school, which are three very valuable words, figure it out. And we've managed to do that. And I've managed to do that over the past several years. But my big interest, especially when I lived in the Middle east and did all this traveling, was to try to figure out how you can make a difference in other people's lives. And this is one way to do it and also save our environment at the same time, because all of the items that are located in our warehouses are basically considered trash.

[Unidentified voice]:

And.

Elizabeth McLellan:

And they would have all hit the landfill. So we can have a major impact on improving our environment and then doing the right thing, which is to provide services and something that will help to make a difference in people's lives, especially those people that are less fortunate than we are.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've received multiple awards from organizations in the community, including the Hanley Center Leadership and Humanitarian Relief Award in 2010, the Red Cross Real Hero Award in 2011, the Outstanding Non Profit Award in 2012, the Northeastern University Social Impact Award in 2014, and the Patriots Miracraft Community Service Award more recently. There are a lot of people who are paying attention to the work that you're doing. Has it enabled you to expand to the extent that you would like to?

Elizabeth McLellan:

Well, those awards, first of all, that I may have received are really not really. They're not for me. They're really for all of the volunteers that have spent thousands of hours making this whole organization, Partners for World Health, succeed. I could never have done this without all of them. And last year alone, we had over 25,000 volunteer hours that people donated that were documented, let alone all the thousands of hours of donation that people made that were never documented. So those awards were absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much to all of those great organizations that talked about our accolades and supported us. But really, we need to remember that the success of this organization is because of all the volunteers, from young to old, that have dedicated many hours. In reality, these awards have brought a lot of attention to us, a lot of attention to Partners of World Health, and they've helped to increase our volunteers, the number of volunteers. And people sign up on the website with a volunteer application, and then they come in for an orientation and they're absolutely, totally surprised about the volume of medical supplies and all of the different things that we can do. And many times these awards have brought attention to other major donors that have helped to support us from a financial perspective. And that's our biggest challenge, as it is for many nonprofits to find enough money to raise enough money at an annual appeal to find grants that would offer support for transportation of these containers, and also to find individuals that might want to make a major contribution that could help. And a major contribution would be a big deal to Partners for World Health because it would allow us to hire a few more people. We need five to six full time employees in order to make this hum and we're not there yet. And partly it's because of the need for financial contributions. And if someone wanted to make another huge donation, we would be able to send two containers a month, especially to countries that are not able to raise the funds to pay for the processing and shipping fees. For example, Malawi, which is one of the poorest countries in Africa and one of the poorest countries in our world, is in dire need of simple basic medical supplies. And we have everything that they could need. However, they have no source of funding. So if someone could come to the foreplate and help to provide a donation for transportation and processing fees, that would be a big help.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, from your lips to if people believe in a God, God's ears. How's that sound? We'll see if people who are listening. Yes, we'll see if people who are listening can come forward and make this possible for you. Where did you grow up, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth McLellan:

I was born in Maine and grew up in Camden. Yeah, with a, with a great family. Two brothers and two sisters and a father who was a physician anesthesiologist up there at Pembe Medical center and a mom who was a nurse.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you have this medical background almost in your, in your DNA, I guess. What types of things did you learn from your parents when you were growing up about the need to care for other people?

Elizabeth McLellan:

Well, the need to make a difference in other people's life and to help those less fortunate was instilled in us a long time ago. I can remember going to at Christmas time, wrapping up Christmas presents with my mother and dropping them off at various houses in the Camden Rockport area, especially for those individuals who were far less fortunate than we were. And also there was something my father always said at nighttime at the end of grace, which was keep us ever mindful of the needs and wants of others. And that has stuck with me my whole life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why did you decide to become a nurse?

Elizabeth McLellan:

Oh, well, that's because my mother wanted me to be a nurse. I graduated from College in Washington D.C. and moved to Boston and was working in a retail store in the Boston area. And my mother didn't like that idea of her daughter selling jewelry for the rest of her life. So she managed to pull a few strings and I entered Mass General Hospital School of Nursing that fall and finished a couple of years later. So I am a nurse because of my mother. And actually it was a very good decision on her part because it's offered me incredible opportunities, first of all, to make a difference in people's lives here in the United States, but also to learn about the world and different cultures and to make a difference in so many other people's lives. I mean, nursing is a profession that takes place, can take you anywhere, whether it's here in this country or anywhere in the world. So I really would advocate and talk to anybody about how great it would be for them to become a registered nurse.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of your favorite memories involving partners in world Health and specifically the people that you've met?

Elizabeth McLellan:

Well, a really recent memory was on our medical mission to Bangladesh. We do a surgical and primary healthcare medical mission each year in March. And we've been going there for the past seven years. And we in one of our primary care settings, which is in the Tangai brothel In Bangladesh, about two hours outside of Dhaka, the capital, where 950 sex workers live with their children. These are women and children that have been trafficked in, or women that have been born in the brothel, that have stayed in the brothel as sex workers and end up raising their children there. But we arrived this year, this was our fourth primary care mission in the brothel. And we were welcomed by 150 of the sex workers who were cheering and singing when we came through the doors into this brothel area. And it was really quite emotional to see all of them there because we are their only source of health care. They can go to the hospital during the year. However, they are ostracized so many times. So when we show up, it's just a welcome, a big, huge welcome by all of them for us. And it really meant a lot for us to be there. It meant a lot that they so much appreciated us coming. And there have been other instances where we have definitely made a difference in people's lives only because we just happened to go. And one of those was in instances was in Senegal last year when we were in a primary care clinic that we were running outside of Dakar, about three hours in the desert, inland in the country, in remote areas where we provide primary health care services. And this particular clinic was the first one in this site, was the first one we have ever done. And a five year old little deaf girl came into the clinic. She has never had a hearing, had never had a hearing test. So there was no way that we would know whether or not she had the ability to hear. And There was no way that she was ever going to go to school unless we could figure out how to have a hearing test and put her in a deaf school located in the capital in Senegal. And so this year, we're now in the process, we raised a little bit of money and found some people over in Senegal that can help support this young girl. And they're taking her to have her hearing test next month, which is pretty exciting, because if she can hear or has some way of hearing, then we can help her with the hearing aids, and then she'll be able to go to the deaf school. Otherwise, she would have spent the rest of her life living in this little thatched hut in a rural village, never having the opportunity to learn anything or communicate with anyone. So that's pretty exciting to be able to make a difference in somebody's life just because we showed up. It was just by chance that we ran into her that day. And there are lots of stories like that, lots of stories. And the medical supplies make a big difference, too, because if you think about what doctors and nurses have to do and how they perform their jobs, and you need sutures, you need scissors, you need cast material, you need dressings, you need bandages in order to put people back together again. If you don't have your supplies, then doctors and nurses aren't able to do their job. So collecting all of these medical supplies that are going to be discarded, that's fine. We'll be happy to try to figure out how to give them another use, especially those for those people. And there are so many of them in our world that are less fortunate. We also do a lot with local, a big local give back program, and we provide personal care items. We provide diapers and briefs to food pantries, to homeless shelters here in the Portland area, Augusta and Bangor. We have. One of my retired nurse colleagues is very much into our local Get Back program and has contacted a variety of different agencies and. And pantries, et cetera, that have come down to pick up truckloads of items that we're willing to give them for free so that they can take them out and donate them or give them back to people in the community. In addition, this nurse by the name of Marie Keller has been known to stop on the side of the road with cans of Ensure and protein drinks and give them to the people that are standing there and asking for money. Instead of giving them a dollar, giving them cans of nutritious drinks for them to drink, which I think is just terrific. And I need a photograph of that happening in Portland, Maine, of her handing out these cans of Ensure out of her car window to all the homeless people.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do you find the people that need you? How do you find the people that are looking for supplies in Bangladesh, say, or primary care, or even the people that need the help that you offer here in Maine through your Give Back program?

Elizabeth McLellan:

The first people that I contacted initially to see of their interest in receiving medical supplies were people and organizations that I met when I was living in the Middle east and traveling. Those are the first people. And now what happens is that individuals and organizations find out about us through the website, really predominantly through the Internet and the website when they type in looking for medical supplies and partners for world health might pop up in there in the search engine. And then other individuals, like refugees and other people that have immigrated from different parts of the world to the United States and who live here in Maine or in Massachusetts, want to do good for their own country. And so they've contacted us and have asked that we provide a container of medical supplies to them. For example, a church group in Massachusetts supports a physician, Dr. Zaywe, who lives in Morovia in Liberia, who visited here several months ago. And so they're helping to raise the funds for the shipping and process processing fees for a full container for her 25 bed facility, which is one of the only hospitals that remained open during their Ebola crisis. So this woman is really. This position in Liberia is very dedicated to helping the people in her country, especially the poor people, to provide services. So it's those kind of individuals that find us and contact us. Sometimes it's me doing a little investigating on the Internet or hearing about other organizations like orphanages, because once somebody started an orphanage, then kids get sick. And so eventually there's a clinic that will pop up very near to an orphanage, and then that clinic will need, or that small hospital will need beds and other different types of medical supplies to take care of these children. So we have a lot of requests coming in. In fact, we could fill right now. We could ship 20, 40 foot containers right now if we had the funding to ship them. And we have 20 places where we could send them to. I mean, I could rattle off a list of people and organizations that need these items.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What about the people that are needing primary care, for example? How do you find out about them?

Elizabeth McLellan:

Primary care in Africa, primary care services in general overseas?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes.

Elizabeth McLellan:

Well, in our for our Medical mission program, we find out. Part of what we do with the container program is that if you're interested in a Container then and we ship a container, we usually try to follow up with a medical mission following the shipping of the container, not when the container arrives, but at some point in the following year we'll try to work in a medical mission. Like we want to be able to go to Liberia and help this woman out and what the services that we would provide, because it's a small place, we probably wouldn't do surgery, but we would do primary health care. And so we would work with those partners that we would identify and they would and tell them that we're bringing nurse practitioners or primary care docs, other nursing professionals to run a primary care clinic. And then they would put the word out and find the patients. And when people know that you're coming, there'll be 400 people lined up on the first day because people will put the word out. For example, we implemented a project this year in Senegal when we were there in May, called Project 10,000. And the goal is to interview 10,000 pregnant women in different countries in Africa and provide education and training to the women on the complications of pregnancy because none of them are given any prenatal care. So they don't understand what could possibly happen to them when these complications occur. So they wait until it's too late, which would result in their death or the death of their child. And after they finished with the education, we give them their own birthing kit full of items that they would ordinarily have to purchase before they go into labor to take to the midwife. But we've saved all those items from the dump here and we package them all up and we actually give them everything that they need to do a normal, to have a normal delivery. And we interviewed 350 pregnant women in Senegal and we partnered with three nurse midwives from three different facilities who will follow up in four to seven months with all of these pregnant women to determine the outcome and to see if they did develop complications and if they did, did they go immediately to the hospital. This will help to kind of look at the maternal mortality rate and the infant mortality rate in different places in Africa. We're heading back to Uganda on a medical mission in August. August 25th, we have 13 people going with us and we're taking nursing students from Kaplan University and five other RNs along with a couple of non medical people. And we could take a few more nurses if anyone's interested in participating. And during that medical mission, we will work at two hospitals providing primary health care, doing nursing education for nurses and nursing students in NICU on how to take care of the critically ill baby as well as interview 500 pregnant women for Project 10,000. And this is something that the students have been involved with from the beginning, making the supplies, writing the PowerPoints on what are the complications of pregnancy, and they will be the ones also with nursing supervision providing the education to these pregnant women. So it's a real total give back from start to finish. It's pretty exciting. So stay tuned. We still have 9,000 more people to go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I'm sure that you will be able to reach your goal because I'm impressed with all the work that you've been able to put into this and the goals that you've already met over the last 10 years.

Elizabeth McLellan:

Right. Thank you very much.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've been Speaking with Elizabeth McClellan, who is the founder and president of Partners for World Health and who has spent her career working in nursing and healthcare administration. Thank you so much for all the work you do and for taking the time to talk with me today.

Elizabeth McLellan:

Today it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My Next guest is Dr. Robert Atkinson, who is an internationally recognized expert on

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

life story interviewing, personal myth making and soul making. He is the author of nine books,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

including the Story of Our Time From

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Duality to interconnectedness to oneness.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Dr. Atkinson previously taught at the University of Southern Maine. Thanks so much for coming in today.

Robert Atkinson:

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So this is a really interesting time that we're in now, this time of kind of upheaval within our governmental systems and there's a lot of shifting and changing that's probably been going on, I want to say at least the last maybe 20 years or so, but you may extend it out further into your lifetime. Why did you think it was time to Talk about oneness.

Robert Atkinson:

Well, it's been a piece of our evolutionary process that's been moving toward that for, I would say, you know, at least a century, maybe a century and a half or three quarters. So it all depends on the perspective we take on it. And the book takes a big picture perspective of the whole process that we're in the midst of right now. And so I step back and look from a distance, pretty much, and there were signs of, and realized need for bringing into our conscious awareness, the need to shift our focus from. Actually, it's been a long, totally, really long process of evolution going back. And one of the ways I like to look at the whole process is in terms of spiritual epics. And those are defined by each individual prophet who has been the founder of a major world religion. So we go back, way back in time to four or five thousand years ago, with the time of Abraham and then Krishna and then Moses and then Zoroaster and then Buddha and Christ and Muhammad. And then in the middle of the 18th century was Bahaullah, who was the founder of the Baha' I faith. And each of those represented a leap of consciousness. And so we started out way back with a. With a focus on a need to create oneness in the family. And then that expanded to need to create unity, oneness, harmony in the tribe, and. And went on to larger and larger contexts, city city, state, nation. And today the need is to turn our focus to humanity as a whole, the world as a whole, because we are becoming a global community. And so that's been a long process in the works. And even though the. The teachings of Bahaullah came into existence in the mid to late 1800s, it's taken the world about that much time till, say, the 1960s or whenever you want to start thinking of the real. The real shift to occur. And one of the. And part of the way that that shift has been made, I think, is through the advancement of technology as well. So one of. One of the key events of my early adult life was the. Was the moonwalk in 1969, where, you know, not only the country, but the world was kind of fixed on the TV screens. And the. It was not only a matter of one small step for man, one leap for humanity, but it was the photographs that were sent back from the moon of Earth, where we could see for the first time, literally, that the Earth is one planet with no boundaries. And then from that point on, a number of other things kept happening to confirm that for us, that new reality for us. And that also Happened to be the time in my own life when I was in the midst of a series of adventures that became my spiritual adventure, my quest. And then that same summer, 1969, was also when I was in the right place at the right time to attend Woodstock Festival. And that was one of those rare experiences where everybody really did feel like it was humanity coming together in harmony. And then a few months later that winter, I met Joseph Campbell, who actually became a mentor for me in the 1970s was when I met him. And there's one piece from the book here that I would just read, because it's a quote from his book that. I met him after one of his talks in 1970. And he kind of took me under his wing. And on one of my visits to his home in Greenwich Village, he gave me a copy of his signed copy of his the Masks of Creative Mythology, which was the final volume in a series that he had written. And in the preface to that, to the last volume of that series, he wrote that the series confirmed for him a thought I have long and faithfully entertained of the unity of the human race, not only in its biology, but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony, with its themes irresistibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax. So there was another expression of that of one planet, one people, basically concept, and my own. So my own quest and study of the world's religions continued from that point on and just became clear as I went along. And that particular quote from him became kind of the center of my emerging worldview. So it has been a long process. And as we now, you know, 50 some years later from the moonwalk, we're seeing that it's turning out to be the evolutionary process toward oneness is turning out to be a much more difficult struggle than we might want it to be. But that's also part of the process. I have a chapter in the book on opposition as the catalyst for transformation. So what we are seeing today is also part of the process of kind of needing, for whatever reason, needing to go basically deeper into our collective shadow to emerge from that, to then get even closer to our sense of oneness.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Give me some examples of what you are describing as our collective shadow.

Robert Atkinson:

Well, that could be kind of a loaded question, but there's a section of that chapter where I talk about the dark night of the collective soul. And that's kind of what I was referring to. Of course, the Dark Knight is a key part of the mystic journey on the individual level, as well as a key part of the hero's journey from Joseph Campbell's work. And each individual journey has that part where we face our own difficulties and have to learn somehow how to overcome the greatest difficulties that we have in our lives. And in order to let go of those parts of ourselves that may be holding us back from the essence of who we are as a soul on a journey from God and returning to the Creator. But we also carry those aspects, those elements, what Jung referred to as the shadow side. We all carry those within us too. And sometimes they emerge to the surface. And so we're seeing that more now with the greater distinction between oneness and duality emerging it's head in so many ways. I mean, we can. Probably the easiest example to use right now is in the political realm with all the debates and beyond that are happening about what our values are or should be or that kind of thing. And so it's a matter of opposites coming out, becoming evident, apparent. And that creates a real struggle between the opposites. And it's a process of that struggle playing out. And eventually the. There's a number of ways of putting it, but eventually what happens is the light overcomes the shadow. And through that struggle, the process of gaining a better understanding of what those two forces are really about happens. And. The force of light eventually. Wins out and the progress moves onward towards that unity and oneness. So, I mean, I didn't really give you a specific example, but there are many and from our recent political realm that have brought out that shadow. And the interesting thing is the more that shadow side comes out, the greater the other side becomes as well. And so it's always a matter of one kind of fueling the other and making both even more apparent in terms of how they juxtaposed to each other. One interesting moment recently was one day we had the inauguration of the new president. The next day we had the Women's March. And so if some might say the inauguration itself and all it represented was about our collective shadow side, then the next day, the Women's March worldwide, globally, totally. Not totally, but mostly spontaneous. Seven people in seven continents in harmony, asserting really the oneness of humanity by bringing in to that one march all of the human rights issues of the last 50 years or more.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Some would say that one of the reasons we have had this issue with duality is that maybe the same people on either side aren't really listening to one another. So no matter what one's political bent is, if people are surprised that a certain president was Elected, then maybe they weren't paying attention to what was actually going on in the other half of the population. I mean, we saw this within our own state.

Robert Atkinson:

Yeah, paying attention is a really important part of the whole thing. First of all, our collective conscious evolution is not a straight line from one point to the other. It is more like a process from one point to another that incorporates cycles within it. So when we lose track of what's going on or don't pay attention to what is going on, that allows kind of an opening for the. For the shadow side to pop up maybe a little easier than it might have. If. And so it's really like that whole process is kind of like our own individual spiritual practice. And if we, whatever we have as a. As a spiritual practice, whether it's meditation or yoga or whatever it is, if we don't keep that up on a regular basis, other things happen, take over. And so it's the same kind of process on a collective level and moving toward our collective goal. I mean, the other. This is all kind of in the context of all of the world's sacred traditions, having in common not only things like the Golden Rule and various versions of the Ten Commandments in each spiritual epoch, but also having in common the need for some kind of regular practice to keep us on the path. And without that, we open ourselves up to other kinds of troubles.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When you were a professor at the University of Southern Maine, what was your focus?

Robert Atkinson:

My field? Yes, it was. My main field was cross cultural human development. And I came to that from a number of other approaches. I majored in philosophy in college. Then I got a master's degree. My first master's degree was in American folk culture. And then I got a second master's in counseling. And then my doctoral work was in cross cultural human development. So I kind of merged all of those interests into a way of approaching and understanding human development from a cross cultural and spiritual perspective. Integrated all of those into my courses, which were. I taught in the counselor education program at usm. So I think the graduate students that I had over the 27 years, I think they, because they were coming from their own personal experiences that brought them to counseling. I think they appreciated that broader cross cultural spiritual approach to human development.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm going to read a paragraph from your book that speaks to me because it speaks about the way that we develop as humans, as individuals. Usually a gradual process. Most children start out with limited access to reality.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As our sensing, feeling and mental capacities

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develop and mature, we grasp greater levels of complexity.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Think symbolically understand other points of of

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view, apply logic, weigh dichotomies, make difficult

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decisions, think abstractly and hypothetically, and eventually

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become theoretical about life and our experience of it.

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As our thinking matures, our consciousness expands,

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and we see what was once hidden. If we are all of us, arguably all of us on individual continua, we're all evolving at different paces. We're never going to all be in the same place at the same time. We may not be children anymore, but even as adults, I think that we evolve. How do we move towards oneness with that?

Robert Atkinson:

It's a long process, and you're exactly right that not everyone is going to get to that goal or point at the same time. And so we notice clearly how there have been throughout history, pockets of resistance or not moving along at the same pace as other parts of the population. So that is part of the process because it's a relative process, it's a progressive process process. And not everyone is at the same place at the same time. As you said, how we will all get to that place of living with a consciousness of oneness at some point is that it is a very gradual process. It's one of those processes or movements that is definitely not short term and, but it is a process that gains a little traction by little steps at a time. And it's kind of, I think it's kind of like. The same kind of process in any other kind of setting. The more individuals who make progress, the more they create a. Greater force beyond the resistance level, and the more they get the collective closer to what some think of as a tipping point, at which point, once that's reached, then many more will come to that point more quickly. So, and the tipping point in terms of our collective evolution towards that is not that great. I mean, it's not 50%, it's not 40%. It's more like maybe closer to 20% of the population. Once that happens, then the process overall will quicken, I think. And once that quickening of the process starts, then everyone else will get there quicker. I mean, it's like once we got to the point of realizing how important unity is within the city, then it gradually eventually became easier to understand how and why unity is important in the nation as well. And we've been at that point for a few centuries, and that's why we're getting, we are from that big picture perspective, we are getting closer to realizing how important it is for humanity as a whole to think of ourselves in terms of, of a global community rather than any individual nation.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How will we know when we've reached that tipping point?

Robert Atkinson:

Yeah, that's an interesting one. I mean, I'm not sure if anyone has written a definitive explanation of that. If they have, I'm not sure quite aware of it. But my sense is that we may know because the resistance put up around it is less. And right now it's clear that we're not there yet because the, the clash of opposites is so strong right now, today that who knows how much longer it'll take for us to get closer to that tipping point and for the resistance to lessen. But that's the way the process happens. It's a twofold process. There's one one thing that's happening is the unfolding of a new worldview, a new way of seeing the world and being in the world. And at the same time, the other thing that's happening is the breakdown of the old way of seeing things. So those are dual processes happening at the same time, and they haven't gotten far enough apart yet for the building of the new to be a smooth ride. There's still a lot of resistance from the, from the old worldview, which really a main part of that old worldview is seeing the nation as the center of focus for the world. But at the same time there are many others. And this has been true ever since or before even the United nations came into existence 70 some years ago. So that dual process has been happening for a long time. And even though there is that strong resistance to hold on to the need to have the nation at the center of the focus, there are other forces that have been in process for so long that eventually that will overcome the resistance.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've been speaking to Dr. Robert Atkinson, who is an internationally recognized expert on life story interviewing, personal myth making and soulmaking. He's the author of nine books, including the Story of Our Time From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness. He previously taught at the University of Southern Maine. It's been a very interesting conversation. Thank you for coming in and having it with me today.

Robert Atkinson:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to Love Maine radio show number 308. Our guests have included Elizabeth McClellan and Robert Atkinson from. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our e. We love to hear from you. So please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for allowing me to be

Elizabeth McLellan:

a part of your day.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

May you have a bountiful life.

[Unidentified voice]:

I've taken down your pictures you gave me back my keys I threw away the gifts that you had bought for me but what's the use I still can't sleep cause I'm drowning in the thought of you I can't keep my head up above the sea I used to think you'd come about but now I got it figured out I am giving up the life the memories of you and I Too much crying on my pillow Too much staring out the window I'll be moving on cuz you're already gone I tried to make it up to you there's nothing I can say you're doing too much thinking about my problems Too much wishing I could sort of although it's just too much for me to bear it's just too much for me to bear. I'm keeping myself busy to take you off my mind but late at night when I lay down the pillows still remind me of the truth the awful truth I can think of anything and find a way to bring it back to you I wonder if you think of me but I presume you're angry if you do. Too much crying on my pillow Too much staring out the window I'll be moving on cause you're already gone I tried to make it up to you there's nothing I can say or do it Too much thinking bout my problems Too much wishing I could solve em it's just too much for me to bear it's just too much for me too. Too much crying on my pillow Too much staring out the window I'll be moving on Cause you're already gone I tried to make it up to you there's nothing I can say or do it Too much thinking about my problem problem Too much wishing I could solve them it's just too much for me to bear it's just too much for me to bear it's just too much for me to bear. All is quiet on the Western prom I hear the ground beneath my feet Scraping the crackle as I move along There ain't nobody here but me but enough couple days they'll open up the gates and the streets of blood With a thousand weights of people victories Some helpless on their knees Some wander aimlessly throughout their days. For now it's quiet as I walk around over the hill into the east they drink the coffee sharing what went down I shake my head and stir my tea but in a couple days they'll open up the gates and the streets of flood With a thousand ways of evil victories Some helpless on their knees Some wander aimlessly throughout their day.