What we're witnessing now is no less than an energetic collision of two major waves of human evolution, one receding and one just now arising. I exhort us all to rejoice in this, because although it means we're presently caught in a swirl of chaos and conflict, the opportunity is arising for us to catch the new wave and begin to ride the leading edge of a massive change in the way we "do" human society.
The outgoing wave is represented by the power/dominator culture that has controlled human behavior for many thousands of years. The disintegration of this wave, which began over a century ago when angry citizens began to overthrow their oppressive monarchies, continues unabated. We've recently witnessed its expansion throughout the Middle East as dictator after dictator falls to the public outcry against tyranny. Because in the early part of this global revolution people didn't know how to create a non-dominator culture, the first rebels who overthrew their oppressors eventually repeated the mistakes made by their predecessors. The new governments that arose purported to be populist systems, but eventually they all fell back into old, unconscious patterns of dominating and controlling the many for the benefit of the powerful few. I include the United States in that assessment, because while our Founding Fathers had the foresight to envision and design a populist system, our government long ago ceased acting as a true democracy and has instead become a corporatocracy. The national agenda is now being controlled by the wealthy elite, who use manufactured lack and campaigns of fear to cow the suffering masses into submission. The recent Supreme Court decision that allowed businesses to fund political campaigns simply codified the silent overthrow of democracy that has been occurring beneath the surface for many years. Business interests now dictate to politicians what they wish to see occur. Our current crop of political puppets - particularly those who rose to power post the Citizens United decision - are allowing their strings to be pulled by these hidden overseers in exchange for status and privilege as members of the "ruling" class.
We see evidence of the old power/dominator wave wherever we notice energetic attempts to control the many (and the much) by an elite and powerful few, and wherever we spot high concentrations of global resources and monetary power creating suffering among the many have-nots. The last gasps of this wave are visible all over America today. They include recent attempts by the corporate controlled media to de-fund NPR and PBS so that in the future all conventionally conveyed information will be screened by the business community before it reaches the public. It includes the removal of longstanding safety nets from beneath the working poor, along with across-the-board reductions in government services, to cow people into working harder for ever less money and fewer benefits. We find it in the recent mortgage scandal and banking collapse, which was followed by a taxpayer-funded refueling of the very financial institutions responsible for the illegal activities that destroyed the wealth of a shrinking middle class. We see it in the recent foreclosure debacle (accompanied by illegal efforts to introduce forged documentation to accelerate the foreclosure process) which has laid the entire burden for this scandal on the backs of laborers and the poor. We see it in cynical attempts to sell the de-funding of Planned Parenthood to the masses based on the religious right's pro-life doctrine, so as to make abortions inaccessible and to deny birth control to the poor, which will ensure that the next generation of working stiffs will be born. We see it in attempts to "dumb down" education so that children are not taught HOW to think, but are instead force-fed WHAT to think and then required to submissively regurgitate that information without error in order to be considered "successfully" educated. We see it in the de-funding of college tuition for students, such that education is out of reach for most or else requires young people to shoulder huge debts that will enslave them to corporate America even before they've fully matured. We see it in the raping and polluting of our environment, the excessive consumption of nonrenewable resources, the careless extinction of other species, and in the production of cheap goods and services marketed constantly through a barrage of advertising and designed to part the masses with their hard-earned cash. We see it in the selling of so-called "services" like mortgage lending, utilities and credit card borrowing, which use ongoing debt to bind workers to corporate America, where they struggle to earn a paycheck to meet those endless obligations. We see it in our current medical system, which limits care to those who can afford it, promotes symptoms abatement instead of genuine cures, and supports the marketing of old age as a disease that must be overcome at any cost. We even see it in our religions, which train people not to question authority and teach us from an early age that we're broken, unworthy and must spend our current lives atoning for the sins of our forefathers if we hope to experience a happy "afterlife."
While looking at this outgoing wave isn't pleasant, we can't turn away from it and pretend it doesn't exist. It's very real, and the energy it is still producing is causing real human and planetary suffering. Certain factions within New Age and spiritual circles have taken the position that we should only look to the "light" and pay attention to the good things that are happening. But to ignore the shadow side of human behavior is to run the risk that this energy continues to collect in the depths of the shadow, where it might regroup (as it has in the past) to rise again.
Looking at the shadow side of the power/dominator wave - contrary to popular fears - doesn't strengthen it. It merely shines a light on it, bringing it to public attention where we have the power to consciously CHOOSE whether we wish to feed this energy or starve it. Meanwhile, the new wave of energy that's arising in human society is gathering momentum and developing global coherence, and it now seems strong enough and bright enough to overcome the heavy, depressing energy of the old wave.
The energy of the new wave can be identified by its grounding in a joyous and overwhelming love for life. It carries within it a reverence for this planet, for other creatures, for nature, for the interconnectedness of all beings and for the evolutionary thrust of consciousness. It values the environment and supports concepts like sustainability, renewable energy and regenerative living. It proposes we make less but make it better, consume less but consume it more wisely, work less but work smarter and with the intention of advancing humanity and stewarding our future. It values wisdom above information, realization above dogmas and spirituality above religious training. It approaches reality from a whole-systems viewpoint instead of objectifying and valuing separation, and knows everything to be alive, sentient and evolving. It defines success not through possessions or monetary wealth, but through the metrics of human happiness, planetary health, the well-being of other species and the ability of society to empower ALL individuals to self-actualize. It promotes self-governance, self-discipline and self-awareness as the cure for external domination. It views work not as jobs for pay, but as the necessary labor of humanity to advance the survivability of our species. It values play and social engagement as much as work, and honors the arts as creative expressions of human consciousness. It recognizes that the true resources of humanity reside not in how much sweat we produce in a day, but in our ingenuity, our creativity, our imaginative capacities, our passions, our talents and our skills. It values cooperation above competition and realizes that humanity advances through freely sharing our wisdom so we can build on what we've learned, not through the bottling of knowledge and selling what we know to the highest bidder. It recognizes that all the money ever created cannot possibly match those resources, and that trying to measure the worth of unique human beings through comparing them to each other is a hopeless enterprise. It learns from the past but does not cling to it; it leans into the future but does not fear it. In short, it is a wave marked by human maturation, where all the fears, insecurities, aggression, isolation, sexual obsessions, cliquishness, short-sightedness, rebelliousness and arrogance of youth are being replaced by a quietly growing desire to live and work in peaceful communion with one another - and with nature - for the benefit of future generations.
So again I say, let's rejoice as we midwife what's arising, and let's not shy away from consciously hospicing the old out of existence. The past served us once, and it serves us still by teaching us how not to be tomorrow. While at times it may appear that the old will never die and the new is too diffuse to overcome the density of the power/dominator structure, it is in that very diffuseness that the new is finding its footing and its power. One or two loud voices in the wilderness can be effectively stilled, but the voices of the many, joined together, will not be silenced. No messiah is necessary to lead this rising wave of human advancement. What will lead this wave instead will be a thousand, million points of living light. So I invite each of you to tune in, turn on and begin to shine your light right NOW...the world is waiting!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Ego and Labeling
Lately I've been noticing the amount of labeling we're doing as a species. When we label another person as "this" or "that" (or even as "not this" or "not that")we are reducing what is essentially the irreducible aliveness of an ever-changing being to a limited mental projection we have created in our own minds. We then give ourselves permission to treat that person as if they are the label we've assigned to them, rather than as what they truly are. By doing so we unconsciously allow our ego to circumvent the energy of Spirit, which knows all beings are a loving emanation from the One infinite/eternal field of life, temporarily existing as differentiated forms.
The human ego loves its mental labels! Once we've attached a mental label to something, the ego then feels free to judge it as good or evil, right or wrong, the same as "me" or different from "me," because discerning these patterns is the primary function of ego. Discerning patterns allows us, as human beings, to position ourselves in space-time and to form patterns of understanding about the world by which we can successfully navigate our sensory reality. As soon as a label has been attached to something, it becomes "objectified." The ego then grants itself permission to behave toward that object the way it believes best for itself based upon what that label tells us about the object, without any further concern for the life force moving within the object that the ego has judged. The ego then, is never in full relationship with the energetic field of life, because it concerns itself mainly with static objects and forms relationships with the world on that limited level. The ego's relationships consist of surface labels and judgments, learned patterns and conditioned, mainly unconscious responses to the various objects it imagines it encounters.
On a certain level of behavior the labeling function performed by the ego can be very helpful to us. If I notice a "rock" I become instantly aware I cannot pass through it and must instead go around it. I don't need to stop and contemplate the rock (or the tree, or the river) to know how to be in relationship with it for my own physical safety. This allows me to move through the world of form easily and quickly, so I can accomplish much more than if I were required to treat each object I encountered as if it were a brand new experience and as if I had no understanding of my surroundings or how best to relate to them.
On another level though, this process of labeling and reducing can be very harmful to us, as well as to those we encounter. When I meet another human being, perhaps in a restaurant, and label him as "waiter," I then give myself permission to behave toward him as if his sole purpose in life is to take my order, serve me my food and clear away my dirty dishes without disturbing my meal in any way. Unless a deeper awareness rises below and behind the surface level of egoic conditioned labeling, I will therefore miss the opportunity to interact with that being who is doing the serving on a soul level, where I can honor the depth and beauty of his aliveness and invite him to honor mine.
For a very long time - probably since the evolution of human language - humanity has learned to move through the world using labels and forming conditioned mental patterns with respect to objects. This behavior has allowed us to evolve rapidly, to create new technologies and to advance our capacities and objective understanding of the world. And yet...because we have become so attached to our labels and comfortable with our judgments, the technologies we've created and the ways we're interacting with our living planet and with each other often fail to root deeply enough to form loving, lasting relationships on the level of life itself. This explains why we can pollute a river without relating to it as something more than a "convenient place to dump waste," and why we can bomb a city and not relate to its suffering occupants as anything more than "enemies." Most of the suffering we observe in our world - and most of the damage we've done to our living planet - can be traced directly to our habit of objectifying and reducing life to mere mental concepts, and then relating to it in a limited way as if the concept we've formed is the whole truth of what we're experiencing.
I believe the evolutionary shift that is occurring right here and now in human consciousness is an internal thrust toward greater awareness of the limitations of assigning labels, as well as an awakening to the deep and energetic interconnectedness of all things. The realization that we can't neatly reduce the energetic field of life - in any form - to a static label and relate to it only in that limited way is a change that enables us to shift our present social systems (which are failing) toward new, deeper and more meaningful ways of being in relationship with one another and with the living world that contains and supports us all. That internal movement is urging our long-subdued spirits to awaken. An awakened spirit recognizes and honors the limited but crucial role being played by ego in keeping the body safe, even as Spirit steps forward and claims its rightful place as "captain of the ship." We're not here to eliminate our egos or blame and curse them for performing their given functions, but to direct them where they belong, in service to Spirit. That new contextualization allows Spirit to engage more fully and richly with itself in the field of life - as it meets and honors its infinite/eternal self in the form of all other beings with whom we share this living world.
The human ego loves its mental labels! Once we've attached a mental label to something, the ego then feels free to judge it as good or evil, right or wrong, the same as "me" or different from "me," because discerning these patterns is the primary function of ego. Discerning patterns allows us, as human beings, to position ourselves in space-time and to form patterns of understanding about the world by which we can successfully navigate our sensory reality. As soon as a label has been attached to something, it becomes "objectified." The ego then grants itself permission to behave toward that object the way it believes best for itself based upon what that label tells us about the object, without any further concern for the life force moving within the object that the ego has judged. The ego then, is never in full relationship with the energetic field of life, because it concerns itself mainly with static objects and forms relationships with the world on that limited level. The ego's relationships consist of surface labels and judgments, learned patterns and conditioned, mainly unconscious responses to the various objects it imagines it encounters.
On a certain level of behavior the labeling function performed by the ego can be very helpful to us. If I notice a "rock" I become instantly aware I cannot pass through it and must instead go around it. I don't need to stop and contemplate the rock (or the tree, or the river) to know how to be in relationship with it for my own physical safety. This allows me to move through the world of form easily and quickly, so I can accomplish much more than if I were required to treat each object I encountered as if it were a brand new experience and as if I had no understanding of my surroundings or how best to relate to them.
On another level though, this process of labeling and reducing can be very harmful to us, as well as to those we encounter. When I meet another human being, perhaps in a restaurant, and label him as "waiter," I then give myself permission to behave toward him as if his sole purpose in life is to take my order, serve me my food and clear away my dirty dishes without disturbing my meal in any way. Unless a deeper awareness rises below and behind the surface level of egoic conditioned labeling, I will therefore miss the opportunity to interact with that being who is doing the serving on a soul level, where I can honor the depth and beauty of his aliveness and invite him to honor mine.
For a very long time - probably since the evolution of human language - humanity has learned to move through the world using labels and forming conditioned mental patterns with respect to objects. This behavior has allowed us to evolve rapidly, to create new technologies and to advance our capacities and objective understanding of the world. And yet...because we have become so attached to our labels and comfortable with our judgments, the technologies we've created and the ways we're interacting with our living planet and with each other often fail to root deeply enough to form loving, lasting relationships on the level of life itself. This explains why we can pollute a river without relating to it as something more than a "convenient place to dump waste," and why we can bomb a city and not relate to its suffering occupants as anything more than "enemies." Most of the suffering we observe in our world - and most of the damage we've done to our living planet - can be traced directly to our habit of objectifying and reducing life to mere mental concepts, and then relating to it in a limited way as if the concept we've formed is the whole truth of what we're experiencing.
I believe the evolutionary shift that is occurring right here and now in human consciousness is an internal thrust toward greater awareness of the limitations of assigning labels, as well as an awakening to the deep and energetic interconnectedness of all things. The realization that we can't neatly reduce the energetic field of life - in any form - to a static label and relate to it only in that limited way is a change that enables us to shift our present social systems (which are failing) toward new, deeper and more meaningful ways of being in relationship with one another and with the living world that contains and supports us all. That internal movement is urging our long-subdued spirits to awaken. An awakened spirit recognizes and honors the limited but crucial role being played by ego in keeping the body safe, even as Spirit steps forward and claims its rightful place as "captain of the ship." We're not here to eliminate our egos or blame and curse them for performing their given functions, but to direct them where they belong, in service to Spirit. That new contextualization allows Spirit to engage more fully and richly with itself in the field of life - as it meets and honors its infinite/eternal self in the form of all other beings with whom we share this living world.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Rising Feminine as Evolutionary Force
If you're a woman and reading this blog, you may recall adolescence as a turbulent emotional time, fraught with insecurity. We worried about our bodies - would they mature to resemble those of the supermodels being held up as paragons of beauty? We worried about relationships - would we be able to attract and develop an intimate, loving relationship with another without having to exchange sexual favors before we were ready? We worried about pregnancy - would we be able to make it through the "danger years" of adolescence without finding ourselves saddled with a child before we were ready and able to fully care for one? We worried about protecting ourselves from sexual predators - would we, innocents that we were, be able to recognize that danger before it was too late? We worried about accidentally bleeding all over ourselves at the most inopportune times, and we suffered through the pain of menstrual cramps as well as the emotional ups and downs of our own hormonal tides. We worried about belonging to the right clique, about wearing the right clothes, about saying the right things, about (heaven forbid!) not embarrassing ourselves to the point of no redemption. In short, we worried. Constantly. At least most of us did. Even those of us who were popular and expressed supreme confidence on the outside, on the inside still felt occasionally diminished by the uncomfortable changes of our adolescence.
The result of all this was that during adolescence, the happy, energetic girl-child who held her own with the boys during prepubescence lost her confidence. As she looked around, she noticed the boys getting bigger, bolder, stronger, more aggressive, more assertive with every passing day. Masculine energy, fueled by a massive increase in testosterone, became something against which she could no longer physically hold her own. By contrast, and out of an innate desire to protect herself, the feminine retreated into the safety of her own psyche while the masculine practiced expressing himself and manifesting his own ideas into the world.
Why is this so important for us to discuss? I believe it's crucial because if we look at how we develop on an individual basis and recognize that, as has been scientifically validated, our cosmos applies patterns and uses fractals to replicate itself, we can see that the social behavior of humanity seems to be reflective of the behavior of human individuals as we mature. In other words, the way we each evolve as individuals is very likely indicative of the way we've been evolving as a species.
What can we observe about human society today that gives us clues about our species evolution? To begin with, we can observe that it is indeed still a male dominated society, and that - at least when it comes to social design - women have yet to fully reclaim their status as equal partners working in communion with their men. We can also observe the behavior of humanity and draw some conclusions from that. For example, we're still a highly aggressive and competitive species, which is reflective of the adolescent male. We're short-sighted, selfish, narcissistic and highly self-conscious, all of which are also classic adolescent characteristics. We're still fear-based, and many of us continue to harbor the sense that, deep down, we're just not good enough. That too reflects our adolescence and the lack of competency juveniles feel, even as they desire more personal freedoms. At the same time we project arrogance and an unwillingness to acknowledge we might just be wrong and perhaps have much yet to learn. What stage of your own own life do those traits remind you of?
On the bright side, we're also a bold species: adventurous, clever, resourceful, imaginative, and courageous. Still, we have yet to solidify a common dream toward which we collectively aspire, a shared intention toward which - laser-like - we can focus and direct the vast amount of human creativity and energy we have at our disposal. We're still floundering to define humanity's purpose, still seeking and searching and questioning who we are, and why we're here.
If all this is indeed true and humanity is making an evolutionary turn from adolescence to species adulthood, we can look to our personal evolution for clues as to what we might expect to happen next. We know adolescent boys kill themselves at a rate of six times the suicide rate for adolescent girls, have 20% more accidents than do girls, and that four in five adolescents who commit murder are also male. From those statistics we can extrapolate that so long as we remain a male-dominated, primarily adolescent society, we're far more likely to destroy ourselves (purposefully or inadvertently) and to continue to recklessly kill each other than we will be if/when we make the successful transition into our species adulthood. While those may seem frightening statistics and perhaps cause for some pessimism, we also know that the female brain fully matures at 22, while the male brain doesn't mature until the age of 25. If we include that information in our template for our species evolution, it becomes clear that, on whole, the feminine aspect of humanity, which was diminished during adolescence, will awaken, rise and enter the fullness of human adulthood before the male aspect of our species steps into its full adulthood as equal partner with her. While male energy may have led the shift from our species childhood to our adolescence, it's more likely that female energy will lead the way from our adolescence into our adulthood.
Perhaps this explains why modern spiritual movements, ecological movements and social equality movements are populated more richly by women than by men. Perhaps it also explains why humanity's modern challenges reflect our neglect of tasks that would have traditionally fallen to women to perform in the typical home of old. When we observe our society today, we note that our infrastructure is crumbling; our planetary garden is not being tended; the other animals living with us are not being properly cared for; not all humans are being fed, housed, clothed, educated or nurtured properly, and the elderly and infirm are not being well treated. Because our society has had a predominantly masculine thrust over the past few thousand years, what has been neglected (or gone underground during our adolescence) is the womb-like environment that is our planet, which both birthed us and continues to provide us with necessary sustenance. We've been growing frantically and furiously, as is typical of adolescence, but the time has come for us to cease our rapid growth and enter into a more thoughtful, introspective age.
As we leave behind the industrial age and the age of information (the sponge-like period of adolescence where we gather data without too much discernment) what comes next? Here again we can look to our individual shift toward adulthood for clues to add to our species' evolutionary template.
The key to becoming successful in young adulthood is the development of our core competencies. Competency arises through experience, failure, learning and growing...in wisdom, rather than in size. We discover - through painful trial and error - how to live in harmonious relationship with one another; how to choose partners with whom we can work to raise a family; how to set long-term goals and delay our personal gratification to enhance the odds of our success; how to validate ourselves and make sacrifices for the sake of others (especially the helpless innocents who look to us for support) and how to love others for the sheer joy of it, without any expectation of a reward. We also learn that we're not in control of life's events, and that life has a way of expressing itself that is presently beyond our ability to comprehend. We learn to surrender our egos to that truth, to relax and allow life to be as it chooses to be, even as we use our skills, talents, passions, abilities and drives to shape it as best we know how. We let go of our need for continual drama to stimulate our adolescent psyches, and settle into a pleasant state of peace. Though that state may be broken externally by circumstances beyond our own control, we allow our emotions to rise, pass and return us to peace once we've weathered the storms we must face. Through it all, we remain humble in our awareness that - no matter how much we learn about life - there will always be more to learn, to experience, to honor. Last but not least, we trust the inner compass that is our heart (our feminine self) to guide us through the unknown wilderness of the ever-unfolding moment as our mind (our masculine self) continues to mature.
Today, as we ponder these things, let us take a moment to honor the feminine, rising. Let us not in any way diminish, blame, shame or make "wrong" the masculine for being as it is - as it was meant to be - even as we allow ourselves to feel freer to reveal the feminine heart-light which has for too long been hidden from the world. I call to the rising feminine within us ALL - male and female - to step into the fullness and richness of your own truth, your own deep sense of purpose, your own desire for harmony, and embrace those divine and beautiful aspects of yourself. The cosmos itself, by forcing us to confront so many challenges all at once, is calling for us all to shine in the here and now, to mature into the ripeness of human adulthood. Allow your own heart to glow and become giddily pregnant with the infinite possibilities, and let us see what wants to transpire next.
The result of all this was that during adolescence, the happy, energetic girl-child who held her own with the boys during prepubescence lost her confidence. As she looked around, she noticed the boys getting bigger, bolder, stronger, more aggressive, more assertive with every passing day. Masculine energy, fueled by a massive increase in testosterone, became something against which she could no longer physically hold her own. By contrast, and out of an innate desire to protect herself, the feminine retreated into the safety of her own psyche while the masculine practiced expressing himself and manifesting his own ideas into the world.
Why is this so important for us to discuss? I believe it's crucial because if we look at how we develop on an individual basis and recognize that, as has been scientifically validated, our cosmos applies patterns and uses fractals to replicate itself, we can see that the social behavior of humanity seems to be reflective of the behavior of human individuals as we mature. In other words, the way we each evolve as individuals is very likely indicative of the way we've been evolving as a species.
What can we observe about human society today that gives us clues about our species evolution? To begin with, we can observe that it is indeed still a male dominated society, and that - at least when it comes to social design - women have yet to fully reclaim their status as equal partners working in communion with their men. We can also observe the behavior of humanity and draw some conclusions from that. For example, we're still a highly aggressive and competitive species, which is reflective of the adolescent male. We're short-sighted, selfish, narcissistic and highly self-conscious, all of which are also classic adolescent characteristics. We're still fear-based, and many of us continue to harbor the sense that, deep down, we're just not good enough. That too reflects our adolescence and the lack of competency juveniles feel, even as they desire more personal freedoms. At the same time we project arrogance and an unwillingness to acknowledge we might just be wrong and perhaps have much yet to learn. What stage of your own own life do those traits remind you of?
On the bright side, we're also a bold species: adventurous, clever, resourceful, imaginative, and courageous. Still, we have yet to solidify a common dream toward which we collectively aspire, a shared intention toward which - laser-like - we can focus and direct the vast amount of human creativity and energy we have at our disposal. We're still floundering to define humanity's purpose, still seeking and searching and questioning who we are, and why we're here.
If all this is indeed true and humanity is making an evolutionary turn from adolescence to species adulthood, we can look to our personal evolution for clues as to what we might expect to happen next. We know adolescent boys kill themselves at a rate of six times the suicide rate for adolescent girls, have 20% more accidents than do girls, and that four in five adolescents who commit murder are also male. From those statistics we can extrapolate that so long as we remain a male-dominated, primarily adolescent society, we're far more likely to destroy ourselves (purposefully or inadvertently) and to continue to recklessly kill each other than we will be if/when we make the successful transition into our species adulthood. While those may seem frightening statistics and perhaps cause for some pessimism, we also know that the female brain fully matures at 22, while the male brain doesn't mature until the age of 25. If we include that information in our template for our species evolution, it becomes clear that, on whole, the feminine aspect of humanity, which was diminished during adolescence, will awaken, rise and enter the fullness of human adulthood before the male aspect of our species steps into its full adulthood as equal partner with her. While male energy may have led the shift from our species childhood to our adolescence, it's more likely that female energy will lead the way from our adolescence into our adulthood.
Perhaps this explains why modern spiritual movements, ecological movements and social equality movements are populated more richly by women than by men. Perhaps it also explains why humanity's modern challenges reflect our neglect of tasks that would have traditionally fallen to women to perform in the typical home of old. When we observe our society today, we note that our infrastructure is crumbling; our planetary garden is not being tended; the other animals living with us are not being properly cared for; not all humans are being fed, housed, clothed, educated or nurtured properly, and the elderly and infirm are not being well treated. Because our society has had a predominantly masculine thrust over the past few thousand years, what has been neglected (or gone underground during our adolescence) is the womb-like environment that is our planet, which both birthed us and continues to provide us with necessary sustenance. We've been growing frantically and furiously, as is typical of adolescence, but the time has come for us to cease our rapid growth and enter into a more thoughtful, introspective age.
As we leave behind the industrial age and the age of information (the sponge-like period of adolescence where we gather data without too much discernment) what comes next? Here again we can look to our individual shift toward adulthood for clues to add to our species' evolutionary template.
The key to becoming successful in young adulthood is the development of our core competencies. Competency arises through experience, failure, learning and growing...in wisdom, rather than in size. We discover - through painful trial and error - how to live in harmonious relationship with one another; how to choose partners with whom we can work to raise a family; how to set long-term goals and delay our personal gratification to enhance the odds of our success; how to validate ourselves and make sacrifices for the sake of others (especially the helpless innocents who look to us for support) and how to love others for the sheer joy of it, without any expectation of a reward. We also learn that we're not in control of life's events, and that life has a way of expressing itself that is presently beyond our ability to comprehend. We learn to surrender our egos to that truth, to relax and allow life to be as it chooses to be, even as we use our skills, talents, passions, abilities and drives to shape it as best we know how. We let go of our need for continual drama to stimulate our adolescent psyches, and settle into a pleasant state of peace. Though that state may be broken externally by circumstances beyond our own control, we allow our emotions to rise, pass and return us to peace once we've weathered the storms we must face. Through it all, we remain humble in our awareness that - no matter how much we learn about life - there will always be more to learn, to experience, to honor. Last but not least, we trust the inner compass that is our heart (our feminine self) to guide us through the unknown wilderness of the ever-unfolding moment as our mind (our masculine self) continues to mature.
Today, as we ponder these things, let us take a moment to honor the feminine, rising. Let us not in any way diminish, blame, shame or make "wrong" the masculine for being as it is - as it was meant to be - even as we allow ourselves to feel freer to reveal the feminine heart-light which has for too long been hidden from the world. I call to the rising feminine within us ALL - male and female - to step into the fullness and richness of your own truth, your own deep sense of purpose, your own desire for harmony, and embrace those divine and beautiful aspects of yourself. The cosmos itself, by forcing us to confront so many challenges all at once, is calling for us all to shine in the here and now, to mature into the ripeness of human adulthood. Allow your own heart to glow and become giddily pregnant with the infinite possibilities, and let us see what wants to transpire next.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Why We Need Strong and Stable Governments
One of the most misguided notions being promoted today is that our governments should run more like a business. The belief that a "responsible" government shouldn't operate at a deficit, and that the government ought to put its attention primarily on national defense and social justice and leave it to the free markets and corporations to manage the rest of society totally misses the point of effective governance.
Many of our founding fathers were successful businessmen, yet when they conceived the federal government they never once mentioned corporations, balanced budgets or focusing on short-term business objectives. In fact, their overarching vision for government was that its primary purpose was to protect the people and to preserve and protect the public commons. A government of the people, by the people and for the people isn't therefore a government intended to operate with monetary objectives in mind, but with the goals, desires and needs of people in mind.
Governments and corporations not only have different drivers, they also have different capacities. A corporation answers to investors and shareholders and is responsible for earning quarterly and annual profits, so it MUST hold its short-term profit objectives front and center when it decides what to do. Companies can't afford to focus too intently on where they're headed over the long-term, especially if doing so means they might have to divert funds and invest them in future projects that would render them unprofitable for an extended period of time. Corporations are therefore inherently limited in their ability to imagine and activate a higher vision for a better humanity. They must instead wait until whatever problems we're facing become so acute that solving them will be profitable before they'll tackle those problems with any degree of sincerity. That attitude often conflicts with what humanity would like to see happen when it comes to addressing our social and environmental challenges. Do we really want to wait until oil prices reach $500 a barrel and we're having national shortages again before we get serious about alternative energy sources? What happens if we wait too long to direct significant energy toward the problem and wind up running out of oil before we've figured out our next approach?
Government, on the other hand, has the ability to take a long-term view of what's best for humanity and direct its attention toward achieving those long term-goals, even if they take generations to reach fruition. The highway system is a great example of this. We began conceiving a national highway system in the 1930's, but it was only in the early 2000's that we actually fulfilled that vision by paving the last few hundred miles of road that had been laid out in those early plans. What corporation do you know that could have imagined, designed, funded and completed a project of that magnitude over a span of more than seventy years?
We also often hear people say things like, "Individuals know best how to spend their own money. Keep that money in the pockets of the people, don't give it to the government." While that may sound good to someone who's hurting financially, the truth is our governments have the capacity to tackle projects so vast in scope that no individual, local community or even state has enough energy and resources available to effectively complete them. Think of the massive electrical grid that spans this nation, or the vast dams, levees and water delivery systems we've constructed over the years. Consider our national network of community colleges as well as the entire public education system. I might indeed "know best" how to spend my own money, but what I know doesn't help me much when it comes to building a school, constructing a dam or replacing a rickety bridge in my neighborhood. Government affords us the opportunity to pool our resources and collectively invest in our social welfare. Government therefore IS socialism, pure and simple. Why we've bought into the notion that anything done on a collective level to promote the well being of all of us is a bad thing reflects our residual fears around the prospect of totalitarianism or fascism gaining a foothold in our nation if we permit government the strength to do its job well. That has little to do with our own reality, and much to do with the bad memories we have of how other governments have abused and misused their authority.
Last but not least, because government's charter is to protect the citizenry and protect and preserve the public commons, LIFE and the health and needs of life lie at the heart of the government's mission. Government is the only modern institution we've designed to remain above concerning itself with whether or not something is financially profitable. Instead, it has the power to make decisions based on whether a behavior is detrimental to life, to society, to the environment and to the survival of the species in the long-run, and to make decisions from that perspective. If we continue to attack government and reduce its capacity to make decisions that are supportive of life first and foremost, what are we left with? A world that places profits before people, money before resources and short-term gratification before long-term health and well being? Is that truly the world we wish to create for ourselves? And if we do, how long will we be able to live in it before it collapses because we've failed to nurture and protect life itself?
Too many of us today have grown seduced by the belief that everything we do must be viewed through the lens of its "economic viability." What a narrow perspective, and how limiting that is! While we wail and worry about whether or not we can afford to do this or that, The living, breathing world around us is crying out for our attention to resolve the very REAL problems and challenges we're facing with regards to the protection of our environment, the preservation of our natural resources, the social inequities of our societies, the global suffering caused by manufactured poverty and the ongoing decimation and extinction of other species.
We can continue to direct the bulk of our attention toward deciding what we "can afford" to do and remain mired in that short-term and limited perspective, or we can re-contextualize our worldview to honor the needs of life ahead of profits. The thing is, if we fail to do so, no amount of paper profit we may earn will be enough to breathe life back into our planet once we've destroyed its capacity to carry us.
That's the most grave challenge we're facing today. The surface battle between corporatism and governance is simply a reflection of that problem, the battleground on which the philosophical war between life and money is being waged. Clearly though, if we destroy government's ability to promote the values and needs of life in favor of promoting corporate profits and our own short-term gratification, we'll be sending a loud and clear message to mother Earth: we're not interested in becoming a genuinely sustainable and participatory species in the web of life. Like children, we want what we want, right here and now, and we don't much care who or what gets hurt while we attempt to achieve it.
Because we're embedded in an inextricably interconnected web of life, we won't be permitted to maintain a selfish attitude much longer. It's not personal; but because life operates as a feedback loop the system won't sit back and allow humanity to destroy Earth's entire living habitat since that means humanity too would eventually die out. It'll solve the problem the way it always has, through species reduction or outright extinction. So while we may think we have free will to behave as we wish - and in the short run perhaps we do - in the long run the choice is already out of our hands.
Humanity must grow up soon. It's not a choice, it's an evolutionary mandate.
Many of our founding fathers were successful businessmen, yet when they conceived the federal government they never once mentioned corporations, balanced budgets or focusing on short-term business objectives. In fact, their overarching vision for government was that its primary purpose was to protect the people and to preserve and protect the public commons. A government of the people, by the people and for the people isn't therefore a government intended to operate with monetary objectives in mind, but with the goals, desires and needs of people in mind.
Governments and corporations not only have different drivers, they also have different capacities. A corporation answers to investors and shareholders and is responsible for earning quarterly and annual profits, so it MUST hold its short-term profit objectives front and center when it decides what to do. Companies can't afford to focus too intently on where they're headed over the long-term, especially if doing so means they might have to divert funds and invest them in future projects that would render them unprofitable for an extended period of time. Corporations are therefore inherently limited in their ability to imagine and activate a higher vision for a better humanity. They must instead wait until whatever problems we're facing become so acute that solving them will be profitable before they'll tackle those problems with any degree of sincerity. That attitude often conflicts with what humanity would like to see happen when it comes to addressing our social and environmental challenges. Do we really want to wait until oil prices reach $500 a barrel and we're having national shortages again before we get serious about alternative energy sources? What happens if we wait too long to direct significant energy toward the problem and wind up running out of oil before we've figured out our next approach?
Government, on the other hand, has the ability to take a long-term view of what's best for humanity and direct its attention toward achieving those long term-goals, even if they take generations to reach fruition. The highway system is a great example of this. We began conceiving a national highway system in the 1930's, but it was only in the early 2000's that we actually fulfilled that vision by paving the last few hundred miles of road that had been laid out in those early plans. What corporation do you know that could have imagined, designed, funded and completed a project of that magnitude over a span of more than seventy years?
We also often hear people say things like, "Individuals know best how to spend their own money. Keep that money in the pockets of the people, don't give it to the government." While that may sound good to someone who's hurting financially, the truth is our governments have the capacity to tackle projects so vast in scope that no individual, local community or even state has enough energy and resources available to effectively complete them. Think of the massive electrical grid that spans this nation, or the vast dams, levees and water delivery systems we've constructed over the years. Consider our national network of community colleges as well as the entire public education system. I might indeed "know best" how to spend my own money, but what I know doesn't help me much when it comes to building a school, constructing a dam or replacing a rickety bridge in my neighborhood. Government affords us the opportunity to pool our resources and collectively invest in our social welfare. Government therefore IS socialism, pure and simple. Why we've bought into the notion that anything done on a collective level to promote the well being of all of us is a bad thing reflects our residual fears around the prospect of totalitarianism or fascism gaining a foothold in our nation if we permit government the strength to do its job well. That has little to do with our own reality, and much to do with the bad memories we have of how other governments have abused and misused their authority.
Last but not least, because government's charter is to protect the citizenry and protect and preserve the public commons, LIFE and the health and needs of life lie at the heart of the government's mission. Government is the only modern institution we've designed to remain above concerning itself with whether or not something is financially profitable. Instead, it has the power to make decisions based on whether a behavior is detrimental to life, to society, to the environment and to the survival of the species in the long-run, and to make decisions from that perspective. If we continue to attack government and reduce its capacity to make decisions that are supportive of life first and foremost, what are we left with? A world that places profits before people, money before resources and short-term gratification before long-term health and well being? Is that truly the world we wish to create for ourselves? And if we do, how long will we be able to live in it before it collapses because we've failed to nurture and protect life itself?
Too many of us today have grown seduced by the belief that everything we do must be viewed through the lens of its "economic viability." What a narrow perspective, and how limiting that is! While we wail and worry about whether or not we can afford to do this or that, The living, breathing world around us is crying out for our attention to resolve the very REAL problems and challenges we're facing with regards to the protection of our environment, the preservation of our natural resources, the social inequities of our societies, the global suffering caused by manufactured poverty and the ongoing decimation and extinction of other species.
We can continue to direct the bulk of our attention toward deciding what we "can afford" to do and remain mired in that short-term and limited perspective, or we can re-contextualize our worldview to honor the needs of life ahead of profits. The thing is, if we fail to do so, no amount of paper profit we may earn will be enough to breathe life back into our planet once we've destroyed its capacity to carry us.
That's the most grave challenge we're facing today. The surface battle between corporatism and governance is simply a reflection of that problem, the battleground on which the philosophical war between life and money is being waged. Clearly though, if we destroy government's ability to promote the values and needs of life in favor of promoting corporate profits and our own short-term gratification, we'll be sending a loud and clear message to mother Earth: we're not interested in becoming a genuinely sustainable and participatory species in the web of life. Like children, we want what we want, right here and now, and we don't much care who or what gets hurt while we attempt to achieve it.
Because we're embedded in an inextricably interconnected web of life, we won't be permitted to maintain a selfish attitude much longer. It's not personal; but because life operates as a feedback loop the system won't sit back and allow humanity to destroy Earth's entire living habitat since that means humanity too would eventually die out. It'll solve the problem the way it always has, through species reduction or outright extinction. So while we may think we have free will to behave as we wish - and in the short run perhaps we do - in the long run the choice is already out of our hands.
Humanity must grow up soon. It's not a choice, it's an evolutionary mandate.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Deconstructing Dogmas
One of humanity's greatest gifts - and perhaps its greatest challenge - lies in our ability to pass down wisdom from one generation to the next. This capacity enables us to rapidly advance as a species, because each new generation doesn't need to repeat the experiences of past generations. Instead we can build on what has been learned by our elders and use that vast platform of wisdom as a place from which to create new experiences for ourselves, as well as to attain ever higher levels of wisdom.
Where the challenge arises around this gift is the fact that what made sense for one era, and what has been passed down through generations as wisdom, may not make sense anymore in light of the changes that have occurred within our species and in our world. In these situations, what we've carried forward as "wisdom" may in actuality be "baggage" we must shed if we hope to evolve successfully as a species. But how, we must ask ourselves, do we discern which of our ancient teachings and beliefs should be reverently carried forward, and which should be released with thanks for the service they once provided, but provide no more?
The key, I believe, lies in our willingness to continuously and patiently examine our dogmas and to seek the real reasons WHY they became beliefs we held so tight in the first place. Where we have no written record of why a particular belief came into being, we must use our powers of critical thinking to apply our understanding of both life in that bygone era (as well as our understanding of the collective state of human consciousness at that time) to try and make some sense of why it exists. If we can discover why a particular belief was first adopted, we can then decide if those reasons still apply to us today.
One example of a dogma of dubious origin would be the Jewish blanket prohibition against the consumption of shellfish. When we examine the history of shellfish consumption, what becomes clear is that eating undercooked or raw shellfish can indeed be a dangerous pastime. We're told in the northern hemisphere that we shouldn't eat raw oysters during months that contain no "r's," because the warmer water temperatures in those summer months place us at higher risk of bacterial contamination and illness. It's not surprising then, that in the warmer Mediterranean and seafaring regions where Jewish law originated, the highly educated authors of Jewish law decided it was crucial to ban the consumption of shellfish to protect a mainly illiterate and childlike population from what must have been a common illness and freqent cause of death. They obviously had no direct understanding of bacteria and no cures for seafood poisoning, so by declaring shellfish "unclean" they were offering the best insight they were capable of at the time. Add to that the fact that the poorest and least educated of people in that region would have made their living from the sea. Presumably then, those poor fishermen would have sold the best of their catch at market and fed the "trash" of the sea - the shellfish - to their own families. The feeding of shellfish to the families of fishermen has gone on for thousands of years, which explains why a "po-boy" sandwich is made of lobster and why New Englanders put oysters in their stuffing. Clearly then, when we apply modern reason to the ancient dogma we begin to understand why such a regulation made sense in that bygone era. But does it make sense today for Jewish law to continue to prohibit the eating of all shellfish under any circumstances, when today we know how to prepare it and safely consume it?
As a non-Jew I won't presume to offer an answer to that question. It's for every thinking Jew to decide for himself. What I do know is while many of our religious dogmas may have made sense in ancient times, in different locales and for a different level of human sophistication, they've filtered out as largely unexamined biases into our secular society, often with disastrous consequences. The religious prohibition against homosexuality, for instance, can be reasonably examined in light of the fact that it arose during an era when child mortality was high, the construction of great societies was accelerating, and the need for labor and military forces was great. Homosexuals, however, weren't likely to reproduce and contribute new children into the social labor pool. Because homosexuality isn't a choice, the leaders who wrote religious canon must have realized (likely after some trial and error) that only way to suppress homosexuality was to shame the individuals into pretending to be what they weren't, and by threatening them with eternal damnation unless they behaved as obedient social repopulators. Today though, with child life expectancy as high as it is, the global population nearing seven billion and the need for physical labor giving way to the use of machines and technology, that urgent need for everyone to continually reproduce has not only declined, it's fast becoming a problem. Why ban lifestyles that effectively control our problematic population growth, when the reason for originally banning them no longer makes social sense? Not only that, but the policy violates our modern, more advanced understanding of the sovereign right of every adult individual to be exactly who he/she is so long as their behavior does no harm to others.
The difficulty with releasing our ancient dogmas arises precisely because they're so strongly held yet are critically unexamined. They're strongly held because the original reasons given by lawmakers for the belief weren't always the true reasons people were expected to hold them. The original reasons like, "if you practice homosexuality you'll go to hell," were made-up reasons that enabled lawmakers to accomplish social engineering in a population they felt was too ignorant to be effectively educated around the genuine reasons. Just like we sometimes "trick" our children into doing what we want, as in, "Stay in bed or the monsters are going to come out and eat you up," so too did early lawmakers trick an unsuspecting and childlike public into behaving in ways they believed best served society.
Part of our collective maturation process stems from separating the scary tricks that were played on our childlike ancestors to get them to behave in certain ways from the truth. Our longstanding fear of the scary tricks, which were well crafted to keep people in line at their time of origin, often pits our sense of reason against our attachment to those unexamined dogmas in a battle for the evolution of our personal consciousness. We were not only taught the dogmas, we were taught the fears as well.
To find the inner courage to step willingly into the process of examining everything we think we know but that doesn't really make sense, and then to try to make some sense of how it came to be so we can decide if we truly wish to hold those beliefs anymore may be the single greatest task we must accomplish as individuals. Our species can only advance itself to the level of the average human consciousness it contains, so the more of us who - childlike - refuse to examine our inherited dogmas and make way for personal growth, the harder it will be for humanity as a whole to move ahead. None of us can single-handedly change the belief system of an entire society, but each of us has the power - as well as a moral obligation - to ensure we're doing our best to help humanity evolve, by letting go of what doesn't serve us any longer.
Where the challenge arises around this gift is the fact that what made sense for one era, and what has been passed down through generations as wisdom, may not make sense anymore in light of the changes that have occurred within our species and in our world. In these situations, what we've carried forward as "wisdom" may in actuality be "baggage" we must shed if we hope to evolve successfully as a species. But how, we must ask ourselves, do we discern which of our ancient teachings and beliefs should be reverently carried forward, and which should be released with thanks for the service they once provided, but provide no more?
The key, I believe, lies in our willingness to continuously and patiently examine our dogmas and to seek the real reasons WHY they became beliefs we held so tight in the first place. Where we have no written record of why a particular belief came into being, we must use our powers of critical thinking to apply our understanding of both life in that bygone era (as well as our understanding of the collective state of human consciousness at that time) to try and make some sense of why it exists. If we can discover why a particular belief was first adopted, we can then decide if those reasons still apply to us today.
One example of a dogma of dubious origin would be the Jewish blanket prohibition against the consumption of shellfish. When we examine the history of shellfish consumption, what becomes clear is that eating undercooked or raw shellfish can indeed be a dangerous pastime. We're told in the northern hemisphere that we shouldn't eat raw oysters during months that contain no "r's," because the warmer water temperatures in those summer months place us at higher risk of bacterial contamination and illness. It's not surprising then, that in the warmer Mediterranean and seafaring regions where Jewish law originated, the highly educated authors of Jewish law decided it was crucial to ban the consumption of shellfish to protect a mainly illiterate and childlike population from what must have been a common illness and freqent cause of death. They obviously had no direct understanding of bacteria and no cures for seafood poisoning, so by declaring shellfish "unclean" they were offering the best insight they were capable of at the time. Add to that the fact that the poorest and least educated of people in that region would have made their living from the sea. Presumably then, those poor fishermen would have sold the best of their catch at market and fed the "trash" of the sea - the shellfish - to their own families. The feeding of shellfish to the families of fishermen has gone on for thousands of years, which explains why a "po-boy" sandwich is made of lobster and why New Englanders put oysters in their stuffing. Clearly then, when we apply modern reason to the ancient dogma we begin to understand why such a regulation made sense in that bygone era. But does it make sense today for Jewish law to continue to prohibit the eating of all shellfish under any circumstances, when today we know how to prepare it and safely consume it?
As a non-Jew I won't presume to offer an answer to that question. It's for every thinking Jew to decide for himself. What I do know is while many of our religious dogmas may have made sense in ancient times, in different locales and for a different level of human sophistication, they've filtered out as largely unexamined biases into our secular society, often with disastrous consequences. The religious prohibition against homosexuality, for instance, can be reasonably examined in light of the fact that it arose during an era when child mortality was high, the construction of great societies was accelerating, and the need for labor and military forces was great. Homosexuals, however, weren't likely to reproduce and contribute new children into the social labor pool. Because homosexuality isn't a choice, the leaders who wrote religious canon must have realized (likely after some trial and error) that only way to suppress homosexuality was to shame the individuals into pretending to be what they weren't, and by threatening them with eternal damnation unless they behaved as obedient social repopulators. Today though, with child life expectancy as high as it is, the global population nearing seven billion and the need for physical labor giving way to the use of machines and technology, that urgent need for everyone to continually reproduce has not only declined, it's fast becoming a problem. Why ban lifestyles that effectively control our problematic population growth, when the reason for originally banning them no longer makes social sense? Not only that, but the policy violates our modern, more advanced understanding of the sovereign right of every adult individual to be exactly who he/she is so long as their behavior does no harm to others.
The difficulty with releasing our ancient dogmas arises precisely because they're so strongly held yet are critically unexamined. They're strongly held because the original reasons given by lawmakers for the belief weren't always the true reasons people were expected to hold them. The original reasons like, "if you practice homosexuality you'll go to hell," were made-up reasons that enabled lawmakers to accomplish social engineering in a population they felt was too ignorant to be effectively educated around the genuine reasons. Just like we sometimes "trick" our children into doing what we want, as in, "Stay in bed or the monsters are going to come out and eat you up," so too did early lawmakers trick an unsuspecting and childlike public into behaving in ways they believed best served society.
Part of our collective maturation process stems from separating the scary tricks that were played on our childlike ancestors to get them to behave in certain ways from the truth. Our longstanding fear of the scary tricks, which were well crafted to keep people in line at their time of origin, often pits our sense of reason against our attachment to those unexamined dogmas in a battle for the evolution of our personal consciousness. We were not only taught the dogmas, we were taught the fears as well.
To find the inner courage to step willingly into the process of examining everything we think we know but that doesn't really make sense, and then to try to make some sense of how it came to be so we can decide if we truly wish to hold those beliefs anymore may be the single greatest task we must accomplish as individuals. Our species can only advance itself to the level of the average human consciousness it contains, so the more of us who - childlike - refuse to examine our inherited dogmas and make way for personal growth, the harder it will be for humanity as a whole to move ahead. None of us can single-handedly change the belief system of an entire society, but each of us has the power - as well as a moral obligation - to ensure we're doing our best to help humanity evolve, by letting go of what doesn't serve us any longer.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Becoming Conscious of Our Agreement Fields
A given society isn't a collection of monuments, an ideology or even the historic records it produces. A society is a living thing, and what comprises it are the people who self-identify with it by embracing a set of beliefs that are specific to that society. That collection of shared beliefs make up a vast agreement field. Take away the agreement field that binds a society together, and it either reorganizes or collapses. We find evidence of that fact throughout history: societies have risen, established powerful agreement fields, and then disappeared abruptly once the agreement field no longer reflected the truth of who the people knew themselves to be.
Consider feudal Europe. For centuries those who lived and died there unconsciously accepted the shared belief that some of them were born to be royal and others were born to be peasants. That social structure, with all its myriad rules and complexities, made up an enormous part of their shared agreement field. Hardly anyone challenged the system; peasants grew up knowing they'd likely be poor their entire lives and that their function was to serve the royal class - of which they could never, ever become a part. Then suddenly, during a short spasm of revolution that began in the late 18th century, a majority of people all over Europe chose to "opt out" of their shared agreement fields. They guillotined the French aristocracy (upending once and for all the notion of subservience). They also murdered the Russian royals and stripped the surviving European monarchs of any real power. Americans too decided to reject their agreement field with England, upending the old colonial relationship to establish a brand new field of agreement we now know as "democracy." What drove that shift, as we well know, was a massive shift in human consciousness. A collective awareness rose among people that the feudal system was inherently wrong because it didn't fairly honor and nurture the majority of those born into it. That new conviction, which flooded the hearts of the suffering peasants with its deeper truth, replaced their simple, previously unexamined belief - that they were born peasants and were destined to die peasants - that had once been the social norm.
Every agreement field - and almost all the beliefs it contains - operates mainly on a subconscious (unexamined) level, because it's been programmed since birth into our collective consciousness. Unexamined though such agreement fields may be, they define every society and establish the rules under which the citizens agree to conduct themselves - for all their lives.
Beyond our primary social agreement field there exist numerous smaller, overlapping fields of agreement based on culture, political beliefs, family histories, economic systems, religions, racial backgrounds and personal life experiences. These fields are often out of harmony with one another, or with the larger societal agreement field. Wherever they come into conflict is where we find most of the suffering in our world. One group of individuals may identify with a white supremacist field of agreement, while another might embrace an agreement field of African-American racial oppression under the despotic rule of the white man. Place these two agreement fields side by side and violence might well erupt.
When specific beliefs from two powerful fields are in conflict, it places individuals who identify with both fields in a difficult position. They often feel they must choose one field over the other (i.e.: my Christian beliefs are more important to me than my national beliefs). They then try to change the beliefs in the one field so they more closely match the beliefs in the field toward which they feel a stronger affinity. In essence, by "converting" the beliefs that are part of the secular field of agreement to match their Christian set of beliefs, they hope to end the cognitive dissonance and/or alienation they feel. The trouble is, the very act of attempting to forcibly convert the larger secular agreement field to Christianity triggers cognitive dissonance in those who haven't signed on for the Christian field of agreement, and who aren't interested in having that become a litmus test for being a "good" U.S. citizen.
When we examine the cognitive dissonance we sometimes feel when the fields of agreement we self-identify with are in direct conflict, we really have two choices, not one. Obviously, if they're in direct conflict, one of the beliefs has got to be wrong. Rather than simply and uncritically choose which agreement field we support and which we must reject or change to be happy, our wisest move is to step outside BOTH agreement fields for a time and examine the specific belief that is causing us the problem. An uncritical or fear-based mind tends to lurch blindly toward the agreement field that has impressed itself most deeply on the psyche through years of conditioned programming, but IS that the best reason for us to embrace a belief? By taking the time to deeply examine what it is we truly believe, we empower ourselves to discover our own highest truth.
The trouble with all these longstanding agreement fields that overlap and coincide to form a complex human society is that they came into existence long before most of us were born. We weren't offered much in the way of opportunity to contribute our truths to them, and often were taught that just questioning them was enough to cause us to be rejected by the others who were in the agreement field. For the main part we were also indoctrinated into these agreement fields before we were old enough to think for ourselves, which makes it very hard for us to question what we believe.
There's a heaviness that seems to develop over time in every society, and America is feeling it now. It results from the collective weightiness of the conflicts from all the longstanding agreement fields we've put into place. Many of those agreement fields are relics of bygone eras, but the very act of letting them go seems terrifying to those who self-identify with them. Who am I, we wonder, if not the sum total of all my agreement fields?
As we ask ourselves that question, what we discover is that as we begin to release our mental grip on all our various agreement fields, what emerges is something that is not lessened by our lessening of attachments, but expanded beyond measure. Our attachments to our unconscious agreement fields limit our capacity to engage with each other - to engage life - on the broadest possible level where we all can agree: that we ARE life, having a shared (albeit temporary) bodily experience. All the rest of it - mother, Christian, daughter, employee, artist, wife, friend, middle class, American - are beliefs about who we are, distinctions we make that bring color and passion and direction to our lives...but they're not the truth. Today I may be a wife; tomorrow I may be a widow. That being the case, how helpful is it for me to attach to tightly to the notion that I am wife? Why not just settle for loving where I am, as I am, and being grateful for what I have while I still have it?
Consider feudal Europe. For centuries those who lived and died there unconsciously accepted the shared belief that some of them were born to be royal and others were born to be peasants. That social structure, with all its myriad rules and complexities, made up an enormous part of their shared agreement field. Hardly anyone challenged the system; peasants grew up knowing they'd likely be poor their entire lives and that their function was to serve the royal class - of which they could never, ever become a part. Then suddenly, during a short spasm of revolution that began in the late 18th century, a majority of people all over Europe chose to "opt out" of their shared agreement fields. They guillotined the French aristocracy (upending once and for all the notion of subservience). They also murdered the Russian royals and stripped the surviving European monarchs of any real power. Americans too decided to reject their agreement field with England, upending the old colonial relationship to establish a brand new field of agreement we now know as "democracy." What drove that shift, as we well know, was a massive shift in human consciousness. A collective awareness rose among people that the feudal system was inherently wrong because it didn't fairly honor and nurture the majority of those born into it. That new conviction, which flooded the hearts of the suffering peasants with its deeper truth, replaced their simple, previously unexamined belief - that they were born peasants and were destined to die peasants - that had once been the social norm.
Every agreement field - and almost all the beliefs it contains - operates mainly on a subconscious (unexamined) level, because it's been programmed since birth into our collective consciousness. Unexamined though such agreement fields may be, they define every society and establish the rules under which the citizens agree to conduct themselves - for all their lives.
Beyond our primary social agreement field there exist numerous smaller, overlapping fields of agreement based on culture, political beliefs, family histories, economic systems, religions, racial backgrounds and personal life experiences. These fields are often out of harmony with one another, or with the larger societal agreement field. Wherever they come into conflict is where we find most of the suffering in our world. One group of individuals may identify with a white supremacist field of agreement, while another might embrace an agreement field of African-American racial oppression under the despotic rule of the white man. Place these two agreement fields side by side and violence might well erupt.
When specific beliefs from two powerful fields are in conflict, it places individuals who identify with both fields in a difficult position. They often feel they must choose one field over the other (i.e.: my Christian beliefs are more important to me than my national beliefs). They then try to change the beliefs in the one field so they more closely match the beliefs in the field toward which they feel a stronger affinity. In essence, by "converting" the beliefs that are part of the secular field of agreement to match their Christian set of beliefs, they hope to end the cognitive dissonance and/or alienation they feel. The trouble is, the very act of attempting to forcibly convert the larger secular agreement field to Christianity triggers cognitive dissonance in those who haven't signed on for the Christian field of agreement, and who aren't interested in having that become a litmus test for being a "good" U.S. citizen.
When we examine the cognitive dissonance we sometimes feel when the fields of agreement we self-identify with are in direct conflict, we really have two choices, not one. Obviously, if they're in direct conflict, one of the beliefs has got to be wrong. Rather than simply and uncritically choose which agreement field we support and which we must reject or change to be happy, our wisest move is to step outside BOTH agreement fields for a time and examine the specific belief that is causing us the problem. An uncritical or fear-based mind tends to lurch blindly toward the agreement field that has impressed itself most deeply on the psyche through years of conditioned programming, but IS that the best reason for us to embrace a belief? By taking the time to deeply examine what it is we truly believe, we empower ourselves to discover our own highest truth.
The trouble with all these longstanding agreement fields that overlap and coincide to form a complex human society is that they came into existence long before most of us were born. We weren't offered much in the way of opportunity to contribute our truths to them, and often were taught that just questioning them was enough to cause us to be rejected by the others who were in the agreement field. For the main part we were also indoctrinated into these agreement fields before we were old enough to think for ourselves, which makes it very hard for us to question what we believe.
There's a heaviness that seems to develop over time in every society, and America is feeling it now. It results from the collective weightiness of the conflicts from all the longstanding agreement fields we've put into place. Many of those agreement fields are relics of bygone eras, but the very act of letting them go seems terrifying to those who self-identify with them. Who am I, we wonder, if not the sum total of all my agreement fields?
As we ask ourselves that question, what we discover is that as we begin to release our mental grip on all our various agreement fields, what emerges is something that is not lessened by our lessening of attachments, but expanded beyond measure. Our attachments to our unconscious agreement fields limit our capacity to engage with each other - to engage life - on the broadest possible level where we all can agree: that we ARE life, having a shared (albeit temporary) bodily experience. All the rest of it - mother, Christian, daughter, employee, artist, wife, friend, middle class, American - are beliefs about who we are, distinctions we make that bring color and passion and direction to our lives...but they're not the truth. Today I may be a wife; tomorrow I may be a widow. That being the case, how helpful is it for me to attach to tightly to the notion that I am wife? Why not just settle for loving where I am, as I am, and being grateful for what I have while I still have it?
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Our Society Shapes Us All, And We Shape It
The baby boomer generation - often derided as the most greedy, narcissistic group of individuals this country has ever seen - didn't arise in a vacuum, and it didn't raise itself. Those of us born between 1947 and 1966 arrived on the scene into a preexisting social system which taught us from early childhood that materialism was exceptionally good.
We were inundated with TV ads - the first generation to experience commercials commingled with Saturday morning cartoons - that urged us to acquire the latest and greatest toys. Cereals and fast foods were packaged with our films and TV shows, which in turn bombarded us with images of the "good" life. We were raised on Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, Lassie and Dick Van Dyke. People on those programs lived in single family homes with nice yards in mainly peaceful suburbia. The nicest families had two cars in every driveway, a couple of kids and amazingly well trained pets - and it was all fenced in with white picket. The "bad" life was represented as an inevitable descent into drugs and crime, inner city poverty, homelessness, joblessness and an endless cycle of welfare - all of which stemmed from laziness and/or the lack of moral fiber.
Our religions taught us that we were inherently sinful, and that the path to salvation was to obey authority. To question the Church's teachings meant you'd been seduced by Satan. Hell - eternal suffering and torment - was the punishment that awaited us if we failed to practice blind faith.
In our factory style schools we responded like robots to the commands of bells. Our success was determined by how much better we performed on tests than our peers. The sports we were encouraged to play required us to "beat" others. Losing was labeled as failure, and we learned our worth was determined by how well we measured up against others. Our schools taught us America was the best nation in the world, and that other nations either wanted to be just like us or were so jealous they hated us for our freedom.
Sexuality became the weapon advertisers directed at us when we entered our adolescent and young adult years. If we wanted to get laid we needed a Porsche, or at the very least a BMW. Meanwhile, the fashion magazines urged us to replace our wardrobes every year or risk being labeled frumpy; or worse - unable to afford to keep pace with the ever-changing standards of feminine beauty. The health industry sprang up and targeted us as we hit our early thirties, selling us beauty products, exercise equipment, gym memberships and fad diets, shaming us if we failed to conform to their impossible standards of beauty. For men, that meant packing washboard abs even after sitting eight hours behind a desk. For women it meant being heroin chic thin while trying to hold down a job, care for the children and manage to run a home.
When we entered the workforce we were discouraged from choosing careers that spoke to our artistic and heartfelt passions because we weren't likely to become financially successful, which we learned was the most important factor when selecting a career. We were taught to sell our time and energy to the highest bidder. Our companies then taught us it didn't matter if we offered the world the best product or service; what mattered was that it generated a profit. We discovered quickly that people were expendable (and exploitable) in the corporate quest for profits, as was good service, product quality, the environment, our time with our families and our sense of personal accomplishment.
We were taught by our government to fear the alien other, and to battle any resistance to the global spread of capitalism by using our superior military might. Those who didn't like our way of life were labeled ignorant heathens or godless doers of evil, and we were taught to perceive them as mortal enemies. We learned we needed to "duck and cover" against the omnipresent threat of nuclear war.
Now that we baby boomers are collectively aging, we're being informed that aging is no longer a process but a disease. It's incurable, but we're being urged to do all we can to treat the symptoms. We're supposed to diet and dye, lift and lyposuck, nip and tuck, take hormones and do yoga to hide the embarrassing truth of our aging from the world.
We are the first generational output of the late industrial information age. We were guinea pigs for the "great consumer society" that began in the 1950's, when money from our post WWII reconstruction of the ruined rest of the world flooded our culture and funded a huge middle class that grew temporarily fat and happy on all that global rebuilding. Our sheer numbers made us the perfect target for corporate consumer enterprise. Frankly, it's a miracle any of us still value and practice compassion, generosity, love, kindness and peacefulness; that we do only proves that the human spirit can rise above societal programming.
The American middle class is dying as the rest of the world resurrects. We're observing the reassertion of humanity's ancient have/have-not division around the world. We've been playing this win/lose social game for many thousands of years, and it requires many more losers than winners for it to continue to work. The American dream we were promised as children has become a nightmare of over-consumption, excessive growth, resource depletion, environmental degradation and personal stress to the point most people need medication (or alcohol, tobacco or illegal drugs) to stagger through their days. Because we've been taught we should be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and that any personal failure to thrive is purely our own fault, we've been cowed into surrender to our own fates. Like a herd of cattle being driven to its own slaughter, we've blindly accepted that we're here to serve the for-profit motives of our corporations - even if it kills us all. It doesn't occur to us to notice that in reality we are those corporations, and that perhaps the solution to our many ills is to insist they serve the needs of all the life forms on Earth instead.
It's a painful process to consciously examine and purposefully eliminate the countless hours of toxic programming each of us has received. Human consciousness is like a vast, shared river out of which we all must drink. We've fouled that river the way we've fouled our oceans, air and lands. Before we can even begin to clean it up we must first stop dumping pollution into those waters. Knowing that, as the first generation of adults to have arisen under the grand consumer social experiment, it's now incumbent upon each of us to ask ourselves what toxins we're still pouring into the river. What are we contributing to the collective consciousness, and what might its impact be on unformed minds? What behaviors and ideologies are we passing along to our children, our neighbors, our world? Nobody grows up in a vacuum, as the tragic events of last week have so painfully reminded us. We are our brother's keeper - and teacher, and friend and role model - and we each bear partial responsibility for all events that occur in our shared world. It's time we stopped pretending that what we do individually doesn't matter.
Let's stop telling ourselves that one person can't possibly make a difference in this world. The time is now for each of us to peer deeply inside of ourselves and dredge up the best of what we're capable of becoming. To then gift that to the rest of the world in gratitude for the precious gift of life that we've received is why we're here.
The future of life itself may depend on it.
We were inundated with TV ads - the first generation to experience commercials commingled with Saturday morning cartoons - that urged us to acquire the latest and greatest toys. Cereals and fast foods were packaged with our films and TV shows, which in turn bombarded us with images of the "good" life. We were raised on Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, Lassie and Dick Van Dyke. People on those programs lived in single family homes with nice yards in mainly peaceful suburbia. The nicest families had two cars in every driveway, a couple of kids and amazingly well trained pets - and it was all fenced in with white picket. The "bad" life was represented as an inevitable descent into drugs and crime, inner city poverty, homelessness, joblessness and an endless cycle of welfare - all of which stemmed from laziness and/or the lack of moral fiber.
Our religions taught us that we were inherently sinful, and that the path to salvation was to obey authority. To question the Church's teachings meant you'd been seduced by Satan. Hell - eternal suffering and torment - was the punishment that awaited us if we failed to practice blind faith.
In our factory style schools we responded like robots to the commands of bells. Our success was determined by how much better we performed on tests than our peers. The sports we were encouraged to play required us to "beat" others. Losing was labeled as failure, and we learned our worth was determined by how well we measured up against others. Our schools taught us America was the best nation in the world, and that other nations either wanted to be just like us or were so jealous they hated us for our freedom.
Sexuality became the weapon advertisers directed at us when we entered our adolescent and young adult years. If we wanted to get laid we needed a Porsche, or at the very least a BMW. Meanwhile, the fashion magazines urged us to replace our wardrobes every year or risk being labeled frumpy; or worse - unable to afford to keep pace with the ever-changing standards of feminine beauty. The health industry sprang up and targeted us as we hit our early thirties, selling us beauty products, exercise equipment, gym memberships and fad diets, shaming us if we failed to conform to their impossible standards of beauty. For men, that meant packing washboard abs even after sitting eight hours behind a desk. For women it meant being heroin chic thin while trying to hold down a job, care for the children and manage to run a home.
When we entered the workforce we were discouraged from choosing careers that spoke to our artistic and heartfelt passions because we weren't likely to become financially successful, which we learned was the most important factor when selecting a career. We were taught to sell our time and energy to the highest bidder. Our companies then taught us it didn't matter if we offered the world the best product or service; what mattered was that it generated a profit. We discovered quickly that people were expendable (and exploitable) in the corporate quest for profits, as was good service, product quality, the environment, our time with our families and our sense of personal accomplishment.
We were taught by our government to fear the alien other, and to battle any resistance to the global spread of capitalism by using our superior military might. Those who didn't like our way of life were labeled ignorant heathens or godless doers of evil, and we were taught to perceive them as mortal enemies. We learned we needed to "duck and cover" against the omnipresent threat of nuclear war.
Now that we baby boomers are collectively aging, we're being informed that aging is no longer a process but a disease. It's incurable, but we're being urged to do all we can to treat the symptoms. We're supposed to diet and dye, lift and lyposuck, nip and tuck, take hormones and do yoga to hide the embarrassing truth of our aging from the world.
We are the first generational output of the late industrial information age. We were guinea pigs for the "great consumer society" that began in the 1950's, when money from our post WWII reconstruction of the ruined rest of the world flooded our culture and funded a huge middle class that grew temporarily fat and happy on all that global rebuilding. Our sheer numbers made us the perfect target for corporate consumer enterprise. Frankly, it's a miracle any of us still value and practice compassion, generosity, love, kindness and peacefulness; that we do only proves that the human spirit can rise above societal programming.
The American middle class is dying as the rest of the world resurrects. We're observing the reassertion of humanity's ancient have/have-not division around the world. We've been playing this win/lose social game for many thousands of years, and it requires many more losers than winners for it to continue to work. The American dream we were promised as children has become a nightmare of over-consumption, excessive growth, resource depletion, environmental degradation and personal stress to the point most people need medication (or alcohol, tobacco or illegal drugs) to stagger through their days. Because we've been taught we should be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and that any personal failure to thrive is purely our own fault, we've been cowed into surrender to our own fates. Like a herd of cattle being driven to its own slaughter, we've blindly accepted that we're here to serve the for-profit motives of our corporations - even if it kills us all. It doesn't occur to us to notice that in reality we are those corporations, and that perhaps the solution to our many ills is to insist they serve the needs of all the life forms on Earth instead.
It's a painful process to consciously examine and purposefully eliminate the countless hours of toxic programming each of us has received. Human consciousness is like a vast, shared river out of which we all must drink. We've fouled that river the way we've fouled our oceans, air and lands. Before we can even begin to clean it up we must first stop dumping pollution into those waters. Knowing that, as the first generation of adults to have arisen under the grand consumer social experiment, it's now incumbent upon each of us to ask ourselves what toxins we're still pouring into the river. What are we contributing to the collective consciousness, and what might its impact be on unformed minds? What behaviors and ideologies are we passing along to our children, our neighbors, our world? Nobody grows up in a vacuum, as the tragic events of last week have so painfully reminded us. We are our brother's keeper - and teacher, and friend and role model - and we each bear partial responsibility for all events that occur in our shared world. It's time we stopped pretending that what we do individually doesn't matter.
Let's stop telling ourselves that one person can't possibly make a difference in this world. The time is now for each of us to peer deeply inside of ourselves and dredge up the best of what we're capable of becoming. To then gift that to the rest of the world in gratitude for the precious gift of life that we've received is why we're here.
The future of life itself may depend on it.
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