Guy Spiro: Eric, what's new in the last year?
Eric Pearl: A lot of the programs that we've been starting to help empower people seem to be getting good reception. For instance, we've been starting to teach something called Reconnective Kids which teaches children how to do this work. We've given the class a few times in Japan, taught Maori children in New Zealand, and we're setting up something for South Africa this year. I'm in Tel Aviv as we speak and we're going to a place where we can teach Jewish and Arab children together so then they can take these healings forward to the adults on both sides.
GS: That's a very good idea.
EP: So much time is spent in the Middle East focusing on peace, and to me, focusing on peace is like focusing on a branch of a tree but not the tree itself. The tree is healing. Once there is healing there can be peace. To try to put peace in place without the healing is to try to put the roof on before you build the walls.
GS: It's got to come from the people. Hard line leadership on either side does not get the message.
EP: It also doesn't help that a lot of the world could be more supportive and more balanced in their understanding of what's going on. But they're not, so I guess we have to take it to the children since the adults haven't figured out that they've got to get out of the cycle of attack and reprisal.
GS: Of course that region is one of the foremost examples.
EP: One of the other directions that we're starting to take the teachings is to bring it into the prisons to teach the inmates. Very often in the prison systems, the focus is either very strongly on inmate rehabilitation or completely missing the mark in the rehabilitation. What really is of benefit is discovering that you have a gift where you can help others in their healing process. Then you start to recognize that you're a contributor and have something of value. So as people in the prison systems are learning how to facilitate for one another, meaning for other people, then they start to allow themselves to take their attachment off their own needs and put it onto someone else. Then they begin to receive and access their own healing in a better way. On top of that, they recognize the value of this gift when they are released. They look forward, knowing that they've got a way to contribute and a profession as a healthcare provider. It empowers them to give and to receive healings and that lowers the high rate of recidivism and allows it to drop. Once these people are released, they are truly released, and contributing, and happy to be out instead of looking for an excuse to get back in.
GS: Of course, our prisons are one of our biggest national disgraces. They are monster factories and one of the things that very few people even want to look at, so congratulations on working with that.
