What's become clear after the recent election is that asking politicians to solve the current mess we're in is like asking a dog to attack the master that feeds it. The corporate money that flowed into campaigns to beat the Democrats (courtesy of the recent Supreme Court decision) because the Democrats' anti-corporate policies were upending the financial profitability of the economic system for the benefit of living people made this mid-term election the most expensive national campaign in modern history. More money was spent to ensure congressional gridlock than ever before. We must therefore ask ourselves, who does a gridlocked congress benefit, and why would they invest so much to ensure our congress was neutered?
The answer is NOT the American people, though some were deluded into believing that by supporting the corporate agenda their personal life situation would improve. While that may be true in the short run, the collapse of the larger civilization in the longer run will destroy any short-term advantage they might gain. The real answer is the global corporatist structure, the mega-corporations that no longer have any serious national loyalties and whose primary concern is making more and more money by consuming more and more global resources and exploiting more and more human workers - forevermore.
Global corporate managers don't have to live in the towns where they're closing down factories, causing pollution, destroying delicate ecosystems, pillaging limited resources, triggering competition for wages that reduces the local standard of living, eliminating human benefits, etc. They're part of a rarefied community known as the "uber-wealthy." Membership in that elite community buys them the freedom to isolate themselves from the public and ignore the massive amount of human misery they're creating in the name of corporate profits.
Unfortunately President Obama, in the wake of the recent Democratic drubbing, has NOT turned his aim toward this true cause of human suffering - the anti-life policies of our mega corporations - but has instead stated he needs to be more clear about his support for business and its cancerous global agenda. After tentatively biting the hand that feeds him, Obama's experienced the angry lashing that inevitably comes and now feels chastened enough to slink back into an uneasy truce with his master. His problem was that not enough pack members stood by him and rebelled with enough force to do more than irritate the master, while the more loyal dogs - eagerly anticipating their sweet rewards - surrounded the master and successfully defended him against further attack.
Still, what gives me hope is the realization that such a system cannot survive much longer, especially now that the only power group with the ability to take a principled stand against its oppression and destructiveness has been neutered. As global corporatism's anti-life policies expand unchecked it MUST collapse, because any organic system where the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts (which empowers it to contribute something valuable to EACH of its cooperative parts) cannot survive. Eventually enough parts will refuse to cooperate with a system that does not serve them but only abuses them. Disintegration thus becomes the logical outcome of excessive tyranny. Nature, it seems, has wisely built resistance to the tyranny of concentrated power into the very fabric of life to ensure life is not oppressed too long by those with delusions of grandiosity. Some however, doggedly ignore this truth at their own peril. History is replete with lessons about unchecked tyranny, and the unhappy results for those who would lord it over others with an iron fist.
In this case the tyrant that dominates modern society is not a petty political dictator; it's a belief system infused into a nonliving enterprise. While that may make it difficult to kill global corporatism, it certainly makes it easier to overthrow. All we need do is change our collective beliefs about the wisdom of valuing monetary profits over honoring and nurturing life itself, and we render the present for-profit system irrelevant. What makes shifting our belief system easier is the growing realization - one person at a time - that the for-profit paradigm is NOT making life better for us or for our loved ones, but is in fact making the entire world poorer, more fearful, less beautiful and far less regenerative than ever. At some point enough of us will have had enough and will let go of our beliefs to embrace the truth: we cannot survive by destroying our only host planet, or by crippling the creative capacity of most of our fellow humans so a few can live large.
What modern global corporatism seems to have lost touch with is the organic nature of humanity. It's reduced reality to a conceptual theory: If you can pay for it, you can have it - no matter how outrageous, wasteful, immoral or destructive "it" may be. If you can't pay for it, you must suffer or die - no matter how unfair or heinous that may be. By starving and enslaving the bulk of the human social body and degrading our shared planetary environment in order to reap more financial benefits for themselves, the corporate plutocracy is systematically destroying the very social fabric that supports and sustains it.
This ego-based approach won't survive because it violates the deep inter-connectivity and feedback loop of nature. In nature, all unique life forms are gifted the freedom to attain maturity as best as they are able, given the basic resources in their locale. They're then invited to gift the fruits of their adult abundance freely into the larger ecosystem. In turn, they draw from the ecosystem whatever they may need to survive and thrive - but only that; no more. We humans though, in the name of capitalism, are denying far too many of our young people the ability to discover and blossom into their full creative capacities. We next cripple them with social debts before they've begun to produce. We then force them into mechanized production slots that don't tap their highest and greatest talents and creative abilities, but provide us with what we "believe" we need instead. And we wonder why we're experiencing scarcity!
Many of us also take much more from the planetary ecosystem than we truly need to thrive. We hoard the excess for future generations - namely our immediate blood relatives - at the expense of too many others. Our fears for the survival of our own families has caused us to lose sight of our innately tribal nature, as well as the fact that our personal blood lines cannot survive unless other blood lines also manage to thrive. (Incest, as the blue bloods of medieval Europe belatedly discovered, does not make for a hearty human species.)
The recent Fed action (announced yesterday) to infuse nearly a trillion dollars of new debt into the American economic system is likely to crash the dollar globally, and since the dollar is already worthless (which is publicly unacknowledged but privately understood by the global financial community) all those who BELIEVE they've accumulated great financial wealth will suffer much more than those who have already given up their lust for money and instead learned to recognize and appreciate genuine assets. Genuine assets include food and the ability to grow it; clean water; personal skills, talents and creative abilities; companionship; love; trust; shelter; passion and wisdom - to name but a few. Money, we must come to realize, is only a "greater fool" game. The fact is, it's only as valuable as our capacity to convince someone else (the greater fool) to accept it in exchange for something we can actually use. Cut out the middleman that is money - which is hindering our freedom to exchange our gifts and talents - and we level the playing field immediately.
If collapse is indeed imminent, how are we navigate what seems to be a very chaotic time in human history? For starters, I recommend everyone get intimate with their genuine internal and external resources. Reconnect with nature and how it functions in your area. Figure out how to care for yourself and your family without the need for money to acquire necessities. Discover your personal skills and passions, and develop them. Surround yourself with like-minded individuals and reconnect with people on your local community level. Get strong within your spirit and know that all is collapsing because the old must always disintegrate to make way for what is evolving. Nature is a relentless recycler, and she needs the ashes of the old to give birth to the rising phoenix. Above all, revel in the mystery and wonder of every day. Teach yourself to prize LIFE, to embrace her natural rhythms, to cherish what really matters.
And don't forget to be grateful. To live in "interesting" times means it's on us to shift our reality to a new way of being in relationship to each other and our planet. That you're here now means you're part of the larger plan. Do your part as best you can, and life will take care of itself. You can trust in that.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Humanity Is Perfect Just As It Is.
We are not broken; we do not require redemption or salvation from ourselves. We are wondrous, brilliant, capable, insightful, deeply feeling and deeply appreciative beings. We are an exquisitely unfolding evolutionary movement in the grand and beautiful scheme of cosmic life, waking up to and discovering ourselves mid-purpose. As perfectly evolving aspects of the Divine Creative Process, we have been gifted the virtually unlimited capacity to be more, do more and know more than what we now are. We are not wrong so much as like ignorant children, just now learning how to behave in the larger classroom of life.
Because we are capable of it all - from acts of profound evil to unconditional love for all that is - nothing is inherently our "human nature." We are absolutely free to choose which aspects of the full gamut of living possibilities we want to manifest, and to become that. We have been fully empowered to become our highest vision of our greatest selves in service to all that is. The only things preventing us from achieving that high goal are the limiting and negative stories we tell about ourselves.
What is evolving within us now is not our physiology, but our higher consciousness. The functionality of our minds is expanding exponentially at this time, enabling us to realize just how much we are capable of imagining and creating. The cosmos, by unstintingly revealing to us the consequences of our past actions and by not buffering us from the negative results, is sending us clear messages that invite us to consciously CHOOSE how we wish to be. It has gifted us road maps to success in the form of our emotions and innermost feelings, which joyfully inform us when we are in alignment with the higher cosmic purpose, and painfully prod us whenever we wander off course.
It has birthed us into a wondrous field of abundance - a garden of beauty that feeds and supports us like babies, while we slowly mature into the fullness of our capacities. It has showered us with amazing diversity and a full spectrum of talents, skills and abilities we can use to great advantage once we stop viewing those who are different as threatening and learn to collaborate with them instead. The cosmos has laid for us the widest, brightest footpath to success that it knows how to create, and every morning it shines a new light on that path.
There is no right or wrong answer for what we become. No crime or eternal punishment for missing the mark in our youth and from our confusion. We ARE the universe, in person. We are here to test, explore and play with our own capacities. Whatever happens to our species, whether we continue to advance or eventually are replaced by some other higher life form, we all remain part of the ongoing cosmic process, ever learning, ever growing, ever evolving. We ARE the stuff out of which tomorrow will spring.
No mistakes then; only lessons well learned and new opportunities for growth and advancement in wisdom. We cannot fail; we can only leave some work undone, awaiting the energetic commitment of future generations of cosmic life.
Since we ARE those future generations, here and now - why wait? Why not begin now, and see how far we can get?
Because we are capable of it all - from acts of profound evil to unconditional love for all that is - nothing is inherently our "human nature." We are absolutely free to choose which aspects of the full gamut of living possibilities we want to manifest, and to become that. We have been fully empowered to become our highest vision of our greatest selves in service to all that is. The only things preventing us from achieving that high goal are the limiting and negative stories we tell about ourselves.
What is evolving within us now is not our physiology, but our higher consciousness. The functionality of our minds is expanding exponentially at this time, enabling us to realize just how much we are capable of imagining and creating. The cosmos, by unstintingly revealing to us the consequences of our past actions and by not buffering us from the negative results, is sending us clear messages that invite us to consciously CHOOSE how we wish to be. It has gifted us road maps to success in the form of our emotions and innermost feelings, which joyfully inform us when we are in alignment with the higher cosmic purpose, and painfully prod us whenever we wander off course.
It has birthed us into a wondrous field of abundance - a garden of beauty that feeds and supports us like babies, while we slowly mature into the fullness of our capacities. It has showered us with amazing diversity and a full spectrum of talents, skills and abilities we can use to great advantage once we stop viewing those who are different as threatening and learn to collaborate with them instead. The cosmos has laid for us the widest, brightest footpath to success that it knows how to create, and every morning it shines a new light on that path.
There is no right or wrong answer for what we become. No crime or eternal punishment for missing the mark in our youth and from our confusion. We ARE the universe, in person. We are here to test, explore and play with our own capacities. Whatever happens to our species, whether we continue to advance or eventually are replaced by some other higher life form, we all remain part of the ongoing cosmic process, ever learning, ever growing, ever evolving. We ARE the stuff out of which tomorrow will spring.
No mistakes then; only lessons well learned and new opportunities for growth and advancement in wisdom. We cannot fail; we can only leave some work undone, awaiting the energetic commitment of future generations of cosmic life.
Since we ARE those future generations, here and now - why wait? Why not begin now, and see how far we can get?
Friday, October 8, 2010
Honoring Our Messengers
Recently on my Facebook page I've been involved in some highly intelligent and stimulating discussions around whether it's more important to understand how a thing works or to learn by experience how to use a thing.
I've been noticing that this seems to be the same question behind the underlying tension that exists between science and religion. Scientists are most interested in explaining exactly HOW a thing like human consciousness works. They want to explore the mechanics of the body, the brain, evolution, mathematics, quantum physics - all the fascinating components and moving parts - that make up the larger mystery we call life. Meanwhile spiritualists - particularly those who have been exploring the depths and capacities of human consciousnesses for many, many years - believe they already know the meaning of life. They've figured out how to use their minds by asking why life exists, and then following that question to a destination that revealed to them a truth. They're not really interested (or only mildly interested) in grasping the mechanics and learning how they work. Their passion is to support others in taking the journey into inner revelation, so they too can know WHY we've got these tools we've been gifted.
What seems to be happening then, is that scientifically oriented individuals find themselves defending their line of inquiry against what seems on occasion to be an almost condescending attitude from those who already consider themselves experts on the meaning and purpose of life. Likewise, spiritualists are often condescended to by modern scientists, who can't imagine that someone who doesn't understand the mechanical workings of a tool could really understand how best to use it.
That's because explaining where a thing came from and how it works isn't the same as developing an expertise around knowing when to use it and why it exists at all. Scientists - who ironically are using the subjective nature of their own consciousnesses to the best of their abilities when they make their inquiries into life's objective form and function - don't attempt to explain why consciousness exists so much as to explain precisely how the vehicle that has allowed for its existence creates opportunities for it to self-express. Spiritualists, who ironically are activating the highly mechanical objective structures and technical operations that the scientists are so busily defining, don't attempt to explain how the mechanics of consciousness works so much as why it's important to use it, and for what purpose.
We all know that to be able to put together and take apart a television set tells us nothing about the ins and outs of network broadcasting. Even so, it helps to understand as much as possible about how a TV set actually works before we start fiddling with the buttons on the machine. For help with that we don't turn to the experts who create our TV programming. They may hold wonderfully deep wisdom around the broadcasting feed that flows into our sets, but if our TV breaks they can't tell us how to repair it. Likewise, TV repair people may be very good at fixing a broken set, but they have no idea how broadcasting works or which channels we can access from our location.
I therefore believe that if we are to honor the form (not to mention the absolute brilliance!) of this living universe that has created, contains and activates us all, we need to immerse ourselves in both being life and in applying ourselves to understanding more completely who/what we are and why we're here.
If we stubbornly claim we don't need to understand all the buttons and functions on a home power tool in order to skillfully use it, we're bound to miss realizing some of its potential. At the very least it may take us an entire lifetime to become an expert with a particular tool and discover all its hidden capacities. Likewise, if we don't turn on a power tool and diligently practice using it in a safe and controlled environment, the odds increase that the more we assume we know about it because we've studied a manual, the more arrogant we'll be about using it in a way that damages our surroundings or causes injury to others - or to ourselves.
To refuse to more fully explore the tool of human consciousness because our ancestors passed down to us an ancient manual written for a similar tool they used a couple of thousand years ago leaves us reliant on faith that we truly know what we're doing. That's a self-limiting approach, because the human mind - like all other complex technological systems that have developed over time - has made enormous strides in capacity and function. If we fearfully cling to the comfort zone of what we've been told to believe about older, outmoded versions of ourselves, we risk missing out on the greatest advances in human evolution. Science, by shining a light on the mind's physical evolution and mechanical complexity, is helping us recognize that human consciousness - like a modern electric chainsaw - has vastly improved from the time of our great, great, great grandfather's flint axe. Still, as spiritualists so often remind us, oohing and aahing over the "coolness" of new technology, or studying a manual so we gain a better understanding of the chainsaw's many capacities is NOT the same thing as hitting the "on" switch and figuring out how best to cut down a tree.
How we learn is a very interesting topic in itself. For those who are mechanically inclined by nature to work with their hands, picking up a tool and playing with it seems the most efficient way to learn how to use it. They may glance at the manual now and again if a question or two arises; but they learn by subjecting themselves to the physical experience of practice, not by reading or listening to lectures about the process. This path to higher learning is the one taken by all the great sages who have ever lived in our world - those who have fearlessly wielded the tool of Mind to explore the innermost reaches of themselves. These are the early Jewish prophets who - despite their fears - asked searing questions of God; and who received answers that spoke to humanity at its level of understanding at that time. They then shared those answers with the many millions who didn't yet know they had the power to create their own subjective experience of God. This describes Jesus, who - because he sensed the ancient manuals referred to an outmoded version of who and what he believed he had the capacity to become - stepped beyond those texts and plunged into the abyss of the unknown, on a wondrous journey of self-discovery. This also describes the radical subjectivity of Muhammad, the Shamans, the Pagan High Priestesses, Buddha, Krishna, the Vedics, the Sufi mystics.
For others of us, following objective lines of rational inquiry is the way we prefer to learn. Many of us thrive by applying our external senses to what we observe and by determining how a given system functions. These are the great scholars of the world, the scientists and mathematicians who work tirelessly to bring greater clarity to the history, structural evolution and present day workings and functions of this amazing tool of life we've all been gifted. They dissect, explore and reveal the inner workings of the atom and the farthest reaches of accessible space, using tools they've created to expand the limitations of our bodily senses. This describes Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein, along with countless others who have made their contribution to our storehouse of knowledge.
What I believe we're just now collectively coming to realize is that the subjective and the objective are not separate realities at all, nor are they innately hostile modes of realization. They are, in fact, highly complementary ways for us to get at our deepest truths. Our eternally ongoing subjective experience, synthesized with our infinitely expanding objective knowledge, advances the total wisdom of the whole being.
Why, you may be wondering, am I so excited by this line of inquiry? Perhaps it's because I was VERY slow to set out on my own journey of self-discovery. Perhaps I'm not quite as intelligent as some or perhaps I'm a bit more fearful; almost certainly I'd been religiously indoctrinated into believing that I risked entering hell if I left behind the comfort zone of faith into which I'd been birthed. For me to make the journey then, to actually hit the "on" button and begin my self-exploration, I needed to both study the manuals and test the methods that had been espoused by the first Jews and early Christians. I also studied the teachings and explored the practices of Wicca, Shamanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, theoretical physics, biology, evolutionary theory, quantum physics, mathematics, philosophy and so forth. Continually I merged all that information with my personal experiences and explorations, so that along the way I could feel confident I was moving in the right direction. For many years I stumbled about, traversing first this side then that side of the mountain of self-realization, wandering from ancient path to modern path and back across again, until one day (today perhaps!) I suddenly realized I'd created my very OWN path - the perfect trail that has led me to be the beautiful, grateful and loving being I am at this very moment.
Along the way, whenever I felt lost or afraid or beset upon by the demons of my own imaginings, I regularly consulted whichever manuals or sages spoke loudest to me at that particular stage of my inner journey. Eventually I discovered that virtually all the manuals and all the sages - both the ancients and the modern day versions - pointed to the same thing, only from different social, cultural, historical, experiential and rational perspectives. What I especially love about my own journey is that because I have flailed about in ways that have caused me to literally stumble on all of these paths in my struggles up the mountain, I can honor them all for having been there to provide me with a much-needed boost of courage and support whenever I felt too dispirited to continue.
I therefore salute ALL the manual designers and sages from every era and walk of life. It seems to me that - rather than continue to argue over who's produced the most up to date manual or which sage got it "more right" than all the others - we ought not to throw away any of the fruits of all our human efforts. We never know when some poor, lost soul may find something we personally don't feel is important to be exactly what he or she needs to get back on course. May we instead begin to more fully honor our own evolutionary progress by thoughtfully updating our ancient manuals with grace, instead of worshiping them or the tools they describe as the apex of human advancement. May we continue to broaden our trails, to groom and light the many paths that lead the way to human self-realization. May we also begin to more compassionately - instead of through judgment, intimidation or impatience - kindly and lovingly take the hands of those who feel ready to make the journey alongside us. May we also develop the wisdom to redirect those who don't feel called to our path toward other paths that may speak more clearly to their own way of learning.
In this fashion it will continue to get easier for each of us to continue our quest to understand and explore the infinite nature of the eternal "I AM," and to bring back our personal wisdom in greater service to the highest good.
I've been noticing that this seems to be the same question behind the underlying tension that exists between science and religion. Scientists are most interested in explaining exactly HOW a thing like human consciousness works. They want to explore the mechanics of the body, the brain, evolution, mathematics, quantum physics - all the fascinating components and moving parts - that make up the larger mystery we call life. Meanwhile spiritualists - particularly those who have been exploring the depths and capacities of human consciousnesses for many, many years - believe they already know the meaning of life. They've figured out how to use their minds by asking why life exists, and then following that question to a destination that revealed to them a truth. They're not really interested (or only mildly interested) in grasping the mechanics and learning how they work. Their passion is to support others in taking the journey into inner revelation, so they too can know WHY we've got these tools we've been gifted.
What seems to be happening then, is that scientifically oriented individuals find themselves defending their line of inquiry against what seems on occasion to be an almost condescending attitude from those who already consider themselves experts on the meaning and purpose of life. Likewise, spiritualists are often condescended to by modern scientists, who can't imagine that someone who doesn't understand the mechanical workings of a tool could really understand how best to use it.
That's because explaining where a thing came from and how it works isn't the same as developing an expertise around knowing when to use it and why it exists at all. Scientists - who ironically are using the subjective nature of their own consciousnesses to the best of their abilities when they make their inquiries into life's objective form and function - don't attempt to explain why consciousness exists so much as to explain precisely how the vehicle that has allowed for its existence creates opportunities for it to self-express. Spiritualists, who ironically are activating the highly mechanical objective structures and technical operations that the scientists are so busily defining, don't attempt to explain how the mechanics of consciousness works so much as why it's important to use it, and for what purpose.
We all know that to be able to put together and take apart a television set tells us nothing about the ins and outs of network broadcasting. Even so, it helps to understand as much as possible about how a TV set actually works before we start fiddling with the buttons on the machine. For help with that we don't turn to the experts who create our TV programming. They may hold wonderfully deep wisdom around the broadcasting feed that flows into our sets, but if our TV breaks they can't tell us how to repair it. Likewise, TV repair people may be very good at fixing a broken set, but they have no idea how broadcasting works or which channels we can access from our location.
I therefore believe that if we are to honor the form (not to mention the absolute brilliance!) of this living universe that has created, contains and activates us all, we need to immerse ourselves in both being life and in applying ourselves to understanding more completely who/what we are and why we're here.
If we stubbornly claim we don't need to understand all the buttons and functions on a home power tool in order to skillfully use it, we're bound to miss realizing some of its potential. At the very least it may take us an entire lifetime to become an expert with a particular tool and discover all its hidden capacities. Likewise, if we don't turn on a power tool and diligently practice using it in a safe and controlled environment, the odds increase that the more we assume we know about it because we've studied a manual, the more arrogant we'll be about using it in a way that damages our surroundings or causes injury to others - or to ourselves.
To refuse to more fully explore the tool of human consciousness because our ancestors passed down to us an ancient manual written for a similar tool they used a couple of thousand years ago leaves us reliant on faith that we truly know what we're doing. That's a self-limiting approach, because the human mind - like all other complex technological systems that have developed over time - has made enormous strides in capacity and function. If we fearfully cling to the comfort zone of what we've been told to believe about older, outmoded versions of ourselves, we risk missing out on the greatest advances in human evolution. Science, by shining a light on the mind's physical evolution and mechanical complexity, is helping us recognize that human consciousness - like a modern electric chainsaw - has vastly improved from the time of our great, great, great grandfather's flint axe. Still, as spiritualists so often remind us, oohing and aahing over the "coolness" of new technology, or studying a manual so we gain a better understanding of the chainsaw's many capacities is NOT the same thing as hitting the "on" switch and figuring out how best to cut down a tree.
How we learn is a very interesting topic in itself. For those who are mechanically inclined by nature to work with their hands, picking up a tool and playing with it seems the most efficient way to learn how to use it. They may glance at the manual now and again if a question or two arises; but they learn by subjecting themselves to the physical experience of practice, not by reading or listening to lectures about the process. This path to higher learning is the one taken by all the great sages who have ever lived in our world - those who have fearlessly wielded the tool of Mind to explore the innermost reaches of themselves. These are the early Jewish prophets who - despite their fears - asked searing questions of God; and who received answers that spoke to humanity at its level of understanding at that time. They then shared those answers with the many millions who didn't yet know they had the power to create their own subjective experience of God. This describes Jesus, who - because he sensed the ancient manuals referred to an outmoded version of who and what he believed he had the capacity to become - stepped beyond those texts and plunged into the abyss of the unknown, on a wondrous journey of self-discovery. This also describes the radical subjectivity of Muhammad, the Shamans, the Pagan High Priestesses, Buddha, Krishna, the Vedics, the Sufi mystics.
For others of us, following objective lines of rational inquiry is the way we prefer to learn. Many of us thrive by applying our external senses to what we observe and by determining how a given system functions. These are the great scholars of the world, the scientists and mathematicians who work tirelessly to bring greater clarity to the history, structural evolution and present day workings and functions of this amazing tool of life we've all been gifted. They dissect, explore and reveal the inner workings of the atom and the farthest reaches of accessible space, using tools they've created to expand the limitations of our bodily senses. This describes Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein, along with countless others who have made their contribution to our storehouse of knowledge.
What I believe we're just now collectively coming to realize is that the subjective and the objective are not separate realities at all, nor are they innately hostile modes of realization. They are, in fact, highly complementary ways for us to get at our deepest truths. Our eternally ongoing subjective experience, synthesized with our infinitely expanding objective knowledge, advances the total wisdom of the whole being.
Why, you may be wondering, am I so excited by this line of inquiry? Perhaps it's because I was VERY slow to set out on my own journey of self-discovery. Perhaps I'm not quite as intelligent as some or perhaps I'm a bit more fearful; almost certainly I'd been religiously indoctrinated into believing that I risked entering hell if I left behind the comfort zone of faith into which I'd been birthed. For me to make the journey then, to actually hit the "on" button and begin my self-exploration, I needed to both study the manuals and test the methods that had been espoused by the first Jews and early Christians. I also studied the teachings and explored the practices of Wicca, Shamanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, theoretical physics, biology, evolutionary theory, quantum physics, mathematics, philosophy and so forth. Continually I merged all that information with my personal experiences and explorations, so that along the way I could feel confident I was moving in the right direction. For many years I stumbled about, traversing first this side then that side of the mountain of self-realization, wandering from ancient path to modern path and back across again, until one day (today perhaps!) I suddenly realized I'd created my very OWN path - the perfect trail that has led me to be the beautiful, grateful and loving being I am at this very moment.
Along the way, whenever I felt lost or afraid or beset upon by the demons of my own imaginings, I regularly consulted whichever manuals or sages spoke loudest to me at that particular stage of my inner journey. Eventually I discovered that virtually all the manuals and all the sages - both the ancients and the modern day versions - pointed to the same thing, only from different social, cultural, historical, experiential and rational perspectives. What I especially love about my own journey is that because I have flailed about in ways that have caused me to literally stumble on all of these paths in my struggles up the mountain, I can honor them all for having been there to provide me with a much-needed boost of courage and support whenever I felt too dispirited to continue.
I therefore salute ALL the manual designers and sages from every era and walk of life. It seems to me that - rather than continue to argue over who's produced the most up to date manual or which sage got it "more right" than all the others - we ought not to throw away any of the fruits of all our human efforts. We never know when some poor, lost soul may find something we personally don't feel is important to be exactly what he or she needs to get back on course. May we instead begin to more fully honor our own evolutionary progress by thoughtfully updating our ancient manuals with grace, instead of worshiping them or the tools they describe as the apex of human advancement. May we continue to broaden our trails, to groom and light the many paths that lead the way to human self-realization. May we also begin to more compassionately - instead of through judgment, intimidation or impatience - kindly and lovingly take the hands of those who feel ready to make the journey alongside us. May we also develop the wisdom to redirect those who don't feel called to our path toward other paths that may speak more clearly to their own way of learning.
In this fashion it will continue to get easier for each of us to continue our quest to understand and explore the infinite nature of the eternal "I AM," and to bring back our personal wisdom in greater service to the highest good.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
How to Design a Regenerative Social System
Frankly, despite all the chatter and fears today about the "New World Order" and its concurrent conspiracy theories, I don't happen to believe that the systematic elimination of most of the human race is the conscious mission of our capitalistic/governing system or any of the people in it. While some people seem to believe that a massive human extinction event may be necessary to achieve a new level of social sustainability, I don't believe they actively strive to create that disastrous outcome.
I do believe what we've experienced has been a slow evolution of the entire human species, until we've reached a point where the system we designed initially to serve the needs of a burgeoning, evolving and mentally developing population has become one that we've outgrown. Clearly our "growth at any cost" model no longer serves the needs of a species that has already reached the upper limits of planetary expansion. Like a baby in the womb at the very end of its gestation, we're now confronting the twin challenges caused by the rising need for consumption and the upper limits of vital supportive structures. Even so, our fundamental belief in and emotional attachment to the only system we know remains comfortably ensconced in our collective psyche. Like the proverbial frog in the pot, we humans sit stubbornly in our too-warm water, even as the temperature climbs and our skin begins to burn.
My aim here isn't to tear down our social system. It's to turn down the heat by reframing things so our motivation mirrors our highest priority: to support and honor ALL life forms on our home planet. In a very real sense it's high time we give birth to ourselves as a species, and give our mother planet a much needed break.
The first step will be for us to reach a shared agreement that this IS our highest priority. At the moment we seem to be arguing over whether our highest priority is to preserve and protect our personal selves and our own immediate needs, OR to steward and honor the larger collective so it can meet the needs of its many individuals. What's important to notice is that this sets up either/or choice that triggers a win/lose game. And since we already know that both our individual well being and our community's health are required for our survival, for us to continue to play that game can only lead to destruction no matter who wins. Destroy the mother and we all know that the infant cannot survive, but the mother's desire to nurture her child must not be underestimated here.
To therefore reframe our discussions around the concept of honoring ALL life forms - BOTH in their unique individual capacities and talents AND as larger organic collectives - changes the nature of the game we're playing to a win/win paradigm. Instead of choosing up sides and pitting both crucial elements for our survival against each other in a battle to all our deaths, we honor the truth that supporting the one is how we support the other.
Our next step is to determine how to balance the needs of all individuals with the needs of the many planetary communities we've created. My suggestion is that we do all we can to design and embody a new system that produces new goods and offers new services only in humane, regenerative and thoughtful ways with our primary motivation being what serves and supports all life. Such a society would gift whatever it produces to all its members in such abundance they would be freed from the demands of "make work" and could realize their highest vision of themselves. Fully self-actualized individuals, having been freed from the necessity of earning their daily bread and expending energy in the stressful quest for survival, would then be empowered to gift of their skills and creative abundance into the system that allowed them to flourish and honored their dream of becoming the best they can be. Here we must note that when we love and feel gratitude for our system - be it our family, our community, our nation or our entire universe - to serve it becomes an honor instead of something we resent and try to avoid.
We can begin this social redesign process by forgiving all debts and ending the practice of charging each other money in exchange for the skill sets, talents and energy we have to offer. Just as we don't charge our family members for the work we do in the home, there's no need for us to charge for the labor we do for our greater home, this planet. We'll also need to take inventory of what we've created so far, and notice where the most pressing needs are arising. We can then gather the energy we've free up from the "make work" we're creating to earn our paychecks, and apply it to meeting everyone's basic needs as quickly as possible. That in turn will empower many more of us to contribute even more talent and energy to meeting our future desires. That extra energy will naturally focus itself on designing and producing what needs to be created based on what we collectively aspire to produce. Here it's important to remind ourselves that nature has proven to us over and over again that abundance produces in ever more abundance, while impoverishment only creates more suffering and lack. This means we can't look at this process through our existing lens of lack, which generates fear; but must instead peer through the expanded lens of our desire for greater abundance, which generates hope.
Next we can begin to prioritize our dreams as a species. What DO we want to accomplish for ourselves, and what legacy do we wish to leave for future generations? Do we want to clean up the planetary messes we've made so far? Do we wish to more rapidly advance our technological capacities and eliminate the laborious jobs that nobody likes to do? Do we concentrate on improving infrastructure, converting our systems to renewable energy and designing lower impact dwellings using sustainable energy sources? Do we advance our knowledge of science and expand the arts? Do we focus on educating our children in ways that set free their highest capacities? Do we lovingly hospice our elders in gratitude for all they've done? Do we set our sights on exploring the oceans and thrusting ourselves into the wilds of space?
My suspicion is that if we get it right we can do ALL these things, and more. What seems to be required of us here is a shift in human awareness. We each need to begin to trust what we already know - that collaborating with each other makes more sense and benefits us all far more than does competing, fighting and destroying one another. We need to look inside ourselves and honor the fact that we are personally hardwired at birth to want to be more, do more, know more and love more, and that the only reason we've fallen short is that we haven't yet built a society that nourishes our desires to full fruition. We must begin to accept the fact that we don't need to prod each other any more than we ourselves wish to be prodded into working though forced labor contracts and the imposition of bills and emotional stressors. We must accept the truth that just as we ourselves function much better when we come from a place of love and feel joy for our work, so do others. We also need to embrace the fact that just as we don't necessarily what everyone else has or wish to do all the same things as everyone else, not everybody is going to want what we have or choose to do what we do. Because we're all so amazingly, uniquely different in our desires there will always be enough to go around.
It helps to note that it feels much better to live and behave this way toward our fellow man, so that's a gentle hint from the Cosmic Mind that holds and supports us all.
I do believe what we've experienced has been a slow evolution of the entire human species, until we've reached a point where the system we designed initially to serve the needs of a burgeoning, evolving and mentally developing population has become one that we've outgrown. Clearly our "growth at any cost" model no longer serves the needs of a species that has already reached the upper limits of planetary expansion. Like a baby in the womb at the very end of its gestation, we're now confronting the twin challenges caused by the rising need for consumption and the upper limits of vital supportive structures. Even so, our fundamental belief in and emotional attachment to the only system we know remains comfortably ensconced in our collective psyche. Like the proverbial frog in the pot, we humans sit stubbornly in our too-warm water, even as the temperature climbs and our skin begins to burn.
My aim here isn't to tear down our social system. It's to turn down the heat by reframing things so our motivation mirrors our highest priority: to support and honor ALL life forms on our home planet. In a very real sense it's high time we give birth to ourselves as a species, and give our mother planet a much needed break.
The first step will be for us to reach a shared agreement that this IS our highest priority. At the moment we seem to be arguing over whether our highest priority is to preserve and protect our personal selves and our own immediate needs, OR to steward and honor the larger collective so it can meet the needs of its many individuals. What's important to notice is that this sets up either/or choice that triggers a win/lose game. And since we already know that both our individual well being and our community's health are required for our survival, for us to continue to play that game can only lead to destruction no matter who wins. Destroy the mother and we all know that the infant cannot survive, but the mother's desire to nurture her child must not be underestimated here.
To therefore reframe our discussions around the concept of honoring ALL life forms - BOTH in their unique individual capacities and talents AND as larger organic collectives - changes the nature of the game we're playing to a win/win paradigm. Instead of choosing up sides and pitting both crucial elements for our survival against each other in a battle to all our deaths, we honor the truth that supporting the one is how we support the other.
Our next step is to determine how to balance the needs of all individuals with the needs of the many planetary communities we've created. My suggestion is that we do all we can to design and embody a new system that produces new goods and offers new services only in humane, regenerative and thoughtful ways with our primary motivation being what serves and supports all life. Such a society would gift whatever it produces to all its members in such abundance they would be freed from the demands of "make work" and could realize their highest vision of themselves. Fully self-actualized individuals, having been freed from the necessity of earning their daily bread and expending energy in the stressful quest for survival, would then be empowered to gift of their skills and creative abundance into the system that allowed them to flourish and honored their dream of becoming the best they can be. Here we must note that when we love and feel gratitude for our system - be it our family, our community, our nation or our entire universe - to serve it becomes an honor instead of something we resent and try to avoid.
We can begin this social redesign process by forgiving all debts and ending the practice of charging each other money in exchange for the skill sets, talents and energy we have to offer. Just as we don't charge our family members for the work we do in the home, there's no need for us to charge for the labor we do for our greater home, this planet. We'll also need to take inventory of what we've created so far, and notice where the most pressing needs are arising. We can then gather the energy we've free up from the "make work" we're creating to earn our paychecks, and apply it to meeting everyone's basic needs as quickly as possible. That in turn will empower many more of us to contribute even more talent and energy to meeting our future desires. That extra energy will naturally focus itself on designing and producing what needs to be created based on what we collectively aspire to produce. Here it's important to remind ourselves that nature has proven to us over and over again that abundance produces in ever more abundance, while impoverishment only creates more suffering and lack. This means we can't look at this process through our existing lens of lack, which generates fear; but must instead peer through the expanded lens of our desire for greater abundance, which generates hope.
Next we can begin to prioritize our dreams as a species. What DO we want to accomplish for ourselves, and what legacy do we wish to leave for future generations? Do we want to clean up the planetary messes we've made so far? Do we wish to more rapidly advance our technological capacities and eliminate the laborious jobs that nobody likes to do? Do we concentrate on improving infrastructure, converting our systems to renewable energy and designing lower impact dwellings using sustainable energy sources? Do we advance our knowledge of science and expand the arts? Do we focus on educating our children in ways that set free their highest capacities? Do we lovingly hospice our elders in gratitude for all they've done? Do we set our sights on exploring the oceans and thrusting ourselves into the wilds of space?
My suspicion is that if we get it right we can do ALL these things, and more. What seems to be required of us here is a shift in human awareness. We each need to begin to trust what we already know - that collaborating with each other makes more sense and benefits us all far more than does competing, fighting and destroying one another. We need to look inside ourselves and honor the fact that we are personally hardwired at birth to want to be more, do more, know more and love more, and that the only reason we've fallen short is that we haven't yet built a society that nourishes our desires to full fruition. We must begin to accept the fact that we don't need to prod each other any more than we ourselves wish to be prodded into working though forced labor contracts and the imposition of bills and emotional stressors. We must accept the truth that just as we ourselves function much better when we come from a place of love and feel joy for our work, so do others. We also need to embrace the fact that just as we don't necessarily what everyone else has or wish to do all the same things as everyone else, not everybody is going to want what we have or choose to do what we do. Because we're all so amazingly, uniquely different in our desires there will always be enough to go around.
It helps to note that it feels much better to live and behave this way toward our fellow man, so that's a gentle hint from the Cosmic Mind that holds and supports us all.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Getting to Zero
My dear friend Makasha is one of the permanent residents at Hummingbird Ranch, the intentional community where I'm spending the week in spiritual retreat. This morning, as I was walking through the community's five hundred acres of pristine mountain wilderness, feeling the first rays of the morning sun warm my face and tapping into the sounds of the nearby bubbling stream, I contemplated the meaning behind one of Makasha's favorite phrases, "getting to zero."
It occurred to me that whenever we're headed in the wrong direction, the first thing we need to do is cease going forward before we can even begin to consider turning around. That's what Makasha means when he speaks of the importance of getting to zero. When we grant ourselves the time to be still we find ourselves in position to select a brand new action from a whole range of possibilities; possibilities that aren't open to us when we're focused too intently on forging ahead.
It also occurred to me that perhaps what modern society needs most at this point in time is to rest for even a short while at its own zero point. For some time now we've been rushing forward in a highly focused manner: exploring, expanding, designing, competing and creating new products and processes. While our inclination may be to continue to forge ahead because stopping might feel a lot like admitting defeat, what we seem to be missing out on is a crucial opportunity to evaluate what we're doing, how we're doing it, and - most importantly - why.
What we're invested in these days isn't so much the stock market, or the housing market or even the consumer marketplace. What we're invested in is maintaining the structure and integrity of our basic social system - whatever that structure looks like and no matter which culture we're in. Every adult alive today has already invested a tremendous amount of personal energy learning about, adopting and adhering to our many shared social agreements. To therefore drop the agreements that no longer serve us can feel threatening to our sense of who we are. Those who have succeeded within the system feel they've earned the right to profit from their efforts. They also tend to blame those for whom the system isn't working for their inability to succeed. Likewise, those for whom the system isn't working still hope to find some way to make it work, and blame those for whom it is working for creating problems that make it hard for them to succeed.
Order - even the kind that is destructive and causes suffering to the human spirit - feels comfortable, because it's known. To accept responsibility for the chaos that may ensue, knowing full well the risks we may be taking by stepping into the abyss of the unknown can be terrifying.
But is it any more terrifying than plunging heedlessly forward when we haven't stopped to consider whether we're headed for nirvana or disaster? If the system we're invested in, the beliefs we've been trained to accept without question and the rules we've been taught to obey cause harm to life, isn't the more reasonable choice to practice moral disobedience? For instance, since we have literally millions of foreclosed homes and empty hotels in this nation, why are we still embracing the belief that just because someone can't afford to pay for shelter they don't deserve a safe place to sleep at night? Why, when thirty percent of the world is either overweight or grossly obese, are we still clinging to the belief that because people can't pay for food they have to to starve? Why, when our oceans and lakes and streams and rivers are choking from pollution and overfishing, are we still shrugging our shoulders and accepting that it's just the way it is, the unavoidable result of for-profit enterprises? Why are we content to watch the destruction of delicate ecosystems, species being driven to extinction, our air fouled, our topsoil eroded and our resources consumed to the point of vanishing, and call that "business as usual?"
Insanity has often been defined as doing more of the same thing and expecting different results. The only way out of insanity then, is to first STOP doing more of the same thing. Getting to zero therefore becomes the first sane step toward reversing any state of affairs when that state of affairs is detrimental to our health, our emotions and our spiritual well-being.
The nice thing about getting to zero is that it doesn't require immediate (fearful or reactive) decision making around what we need to do next. By definition, zero is the still point, the silence, the state of inaction out of which intelligent choices and creative new responses are free to begin to emerge. That very stillness allows for the rising of an intelligence far greater than what is available for us to draw upon when our panicked mind has begun to doubt its own capacities or our body - frightened for its very survival - reacts out of instinct. When accessing that deeper dimension some people call it the heart centered choice, others call it tapping into intuition; but whatever we call it we all know that when we shut down our internal chatter, take a few deep breaths and stop to notice - genuinely notice - what's going on all around us our receptive apertures open wide enough to gather the necessary input to enable us to make much wiser and emotionally satisfying choices.
Some people have died of hypothermia in the wilderness while carrying a pack of matches in their pockets. Others have gotten lost and pushed themselves deeper into the wild instead of waiting for help to arrive. What all such people had in common was a fatal inability to "get to zero." For whatever reason they stubbornly clung to beliefs that didn't serve them, and acted them out. We can learn much from these cautionary tales, or we can collectively act them out on a larger scale. My suggestion is that we take a lesson from my very wise friend Makasha, and grant ourselves the gift of time to rethink what we're doing and why.
It occurred to me that whenever we're headed in the wrong direction, the first thing we need to do is cease going forward before we can even begin to consider turning around. That's what Makasha means when he speaks of the importance of getting to zero. When we grant ourselves the time to be still we find ourselves in position to select a brand new action from a whole range of possibilities; possibilities that aren't open to us when we're focused too intently on forging ahead.
It also occurred to me that perhaps what modern society needs most at this point in time is to rest for even a short while at its own zero point. For some time now we've been rushing forward in a highly focused manner: exploring, expanding, designing, competing and creating new products and processes. While our inclination may be to continue to forge ahead because stopping might feel a lot like admitting defeat, what we seem to be missing out on is a crucial opportunity to evaluate what we're doing, how we're doing it, and - most importantly - why.
What we're invested in these days isn't so much the stock market, or the housing market or even the consumer marketplace. What we're invested in is maintaining the structure and integrity of our basic social system - whatever that structure looks like and no matter which culture we're in. Every adult alive today has already invested a tremendous amount of personal energy learning about, adopting and adhering to our many shared social agreements. To therefore drop the agreements that no longer serve us can feel threatening to our sense of who we are. Those who have succeeded within the system feel they've earned the right to profit from their efforts. They also tend to blame those for whom the system isn't working for their inability to succeed. Likewise, those for whom the system isn't working still hope to find some way to make it work, and blame those for whom it is working for creating problems that make it hard for them to succeed.
Order - even the kind that is destructive and causes suffering to the human spirit - feels comfortable, because it's known. To accept responsibility for the chaos that may ensue, knowing full well the risks we may be taking by stepping into the abyss of the unknown can be terrifying.
But is it any more terrifying than plunging heedlessly forward when we haven't stopped to consider whether we're headed for nirvana or disaster? If the system we're invested in, the beliefs we've been trained to accept without question and the rules we've been taught to obey cause harm to life, isn't the more reasonable choice to practice moral disobedience? For instance, since we have literally millions of foreclosed homes and empty hotels in this nation, why are we still embracing the belief that just because someone can't afford to pay for shelter they don't deserve a safe place to sleep at night? Why, when thirty percent of the world is either overweight or grossly obese, are we still clinging to the belief that because people can't pay for food they have to to starve? Why, when our oceans and lakes and streams and rivers are choking from pollution and overfishing, are we still shrugging our shoulders and accepting that it's just the way it is, the unavoidable result of for-profit enterprises? Why are we content to watch the destruction of delicate ecosystems, species being driven to extinction, our air fouled, our topsoil eroded and our resources consumed to the point of vanishing, and call that "business as usual?"
Insanity has often been defined as doing more of the same thing and expecting different results. The only way out of insanity then, is to first STOP doing more of the same thing. Getting to zero therefore becomes the first sane step toward reversing any state of affairs when that state of affairs is detrimental to our health, our emotions and our spiritual well-being.
The nice thing about getting to zero is that it doesn't require immediate (fearful or reactive) decision making around what we need to do next. By definition, zero is the still point, the silence, the state of inaction out of which intelligent choices and creative new responses are free to begin to emerge. That very stillness allows for the rising of an intelligence far greater than what is available for us to draw upon when our panicked mind has begun to doubt its own capacities or our body - frightened for its very survival - reacts out of instinct. When accessing that deeper dimension some people call it the heart centered choice, others call it tapping into intuition; but whatever we call it we all know that when we shut down our internal chatter, take a few deep breaths and stop to notice - genuinely notice - what's going on all around us our receptive apertures open wide enough to gather the necessary input to enable us to make much wiser and emotionally satisfying choices.
Some people have died of hypothermia in the wilderness while carrying a pack of matches in their pockets. Others have gotten lost and pushed themselves deeper into the wild instead of waiting for help to arrive. What all such people had in common was a fatal inability to "get to zero." For whatever reason they stubbornly clung to beliefs that didn't serve them, and acted them out. We can learn much from these cautionary tales, or we can collectively act them out on a larger scale. My suggestion is that we take a lesson from my very wise friend Makasha, and grant ourselves the gift of time to rethink what we're doing and why.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Universe-Project: From Polarity to Harmony: The Win/Win Way Through
Universe-Project: From Polarity to Harmony: The Win/Win Way Through: "I'm noticing how polarized humanity seems these days, across virtually all aspects of human life. Meanwhile, our challenges grow more pressi..."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
From Polarity to Harmony: The Win/Win Way Through
I'm noticing how polarized humanity seems these days, across virtually all aspects of human life. Meanwhile, our challenges grow more pressing every day. That's generating more fear, along with a greater willingness to implement new ideas. While it doesn't seem we have a shortage of new ideas, we do seem to be lacking any that offer a new solution. Instead, we're proposing more radicalized versions of the same old, tired solutions we've already tried and that haven't worked before.
An either/or approach to anything sets up a win/lose game. And when faced with a win/lose challenge, humanity's position (because we can be VERY stubborn creatures where our competing values and beliefs are concerned!) is to dig in our heels and fight to win the battle for our side, no matter the cost. While there are shades of gray in this present battle and nuances involved in every issue, when we distill down the fight to its fundamental polarity, the essence of it is an all out, no holds barred ideological war between the "no self other than god" camp and the "self is all there is" camp - which, ironically, will collectively leave us with a sense of loss no matter which side wins.
The question we must ask ourselves before this battle progresses much further is this: might we be fighting so strenuously because there are relative aspects of truth to BOTH these sides? What if the deeper truth is we are a both/and species, living in a both/and world? Might there truly BE a unified field that is indeed greater than us all (a higher cosmic intelligence, if you will) AND an existential material reality that is urging us, as uniquely individuated expressions, to be more, do more and know more as we intelligently evolve?
Having "tried on" that theory to see how it fits, I've been delighted to find that a great deal of peace, joy and opportunity for higher self-expression and self-actualization has arisen as I've deepened into the experience of myself as both/and being. As an individuated being, I have increasingly come to know myself as a highly creative, loving and talented person. That awareness feels both marvelous and joyful - when I direct my creative energy in service to other people, and encourage them to express their own genius in service to others as well. It feels awful - because it creates in me a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety - if I use my gifts to enrich myself at the expense of others. Knowing myself to be an inextricable part of a unified field has helped me understand why life works that way.
What I've come to believe we're being called to do as a species, as well as to personally experience and integrate at this stage of our evolution, is to SYNTHESIZE two apparent polarities: the cosmos as "all thing" and the cosmos as "no thing." All-thing (a material expression) and No-thing (a non-material field of infinite potential) are not competing truths or realities. Together they form a unified system; one that creatively self-expresses as an ever-changing collection of unique forms. It seems likely that what we are in fact part of is an infinite field of ideas, feelings and perspectives, eternally expressing and perfecting itself through its creative use of form and self-perception. That field both objectively experiences and subjectively knows itself as something greater than the simple sum of its parts across space and time.
That lives; therefore we live.
Interestingly enough, any simple study of biology teaches us that for any organism to thrive, no matter its size or complexity, the whole must be greater than the sum of its many parts. Otherwise there would be no reason for those previously independent units, which were already wholes unto themselves, to form a larger unit and dedicate part of their energy to the maintenance and support of that larger structure. Each one of us is an amazing example of how such smaller unique wholes (in the form of the 100,000,000,000 cells in your own body) come together to create a living human being, which - because we have been gifted the power of self-awareness - we KNOW without any doubt is greater than the simple sum of its many cellular parts.
If we apply this objectively experienced and subjectively known truth to the universe that created and contains us all, it becomes apparent that everything is based on that one fundamental principal. Everywhere we turn, we find smaller wholes that have come together to create something finer than a simple addition of parts. If that's true for a water molecule, a rock, an orchid, a beaver, a person and a planet, why wouldn't it also be true for the cosmos that in turn contains all these things, including us?
What's amazing is that this rational (mind-based explanation) yet gnostic (able to be experienced) synthesis of the all-thing and the no-thing, when embraced as the truth about ourselves and applied to all else, generates enough energy to resolve all our current conflicts by moving us not to one side or the other of the self versus no-self battlefield, but by transporting us beyond that battlefield to a brand new playground ripe with possibilities.
Once we accept there is truth on both sides of the debate, and that neither was ever entirely right or wrong, we understand the only way for this war to end well for any of us is for us all to fuse the two half-truths into a much grander understanding of life, out of which solutions to our challenges will naturally emerge.
For example, the bitter political debate we're engaged in exposes the fundamental conflict between a form of collective (no-self) totalitarianism - appearing in its benevolent form as a disempowering nanny socialist state, and in its malevolent form as a murderously fear-based fascist state; and a form of supreme individual (all-self) chaos - appearing in its benevolent state as an inequitable and socially irresponsible libertarianism, and in its malevolent state as destructive and deadly anarchy. While each side has been promoting the most benevolent form of its preferred system for quite some time, what we're most likely to end up with, presuming this war continues unabated, is the most malevolent form of one or the other. That's because all attempts at compromise will be overrun by increasing violence and fear, creating an environment that sets people up to embrace the extremes for the sake of simple survival.
Any of the approaches outlined above generate a few positives and a whole host of problems for humanity down the line, because they are all half-systems. Since problems expand over time unless they're corrected, embracing a half-system will inevitably trigger a need for us to either legislate away personal freedoms over time through some form of externally imposed governance (a shift toward totalitarianism) or to forcibly overturn the collective half by force to provide more personal freedom (a shift toward chaos.)
The fact is, we've already seen all four of these models in action, yet none has managed to succeed well enough to convince its own citizens it's the ultimate social solution. If none can convince a majority of their own citizens they work, they surely won't be successful in convincing others to adopt their ideology over the long haul. Additionally, what we're just now learning is that tweaking a model that has already failed at its core only causes that model to fail in a different fashion, but in a more spectacular way because the tweaking keeps it afloat for a longer time.
We can synthesize our political polarities by acknowledging that an individual can't thrive without belonging to a healthy collective that offers ALL its members - no matter the circumstances of their birth or their physical gifts, challenges or intellect - a wide open pathway to self-fulfillment and joy. Nor can we create a healthy collective unless a majority of its members are healthy, self-actualized and willing to contribute some reasonable amount of time and energy to the support and ongoing nourishment of the collective.
Combining the needs of the individual with the needs of the collective is what's required to develop a whole-system model. While modern culture has, over time, left behind the old economic models in which a person was either born into wealth or poverty and basically stayed there forever (peerage and caste systems) the new paths to success we've created have been mainly offered to the children of the wealthy, members of the social majority and the most enterprising and talented spirits born among us. The paths to success narrow considerably for poor and middle class children, the culturally or racially disenfranchised and those born with mental, emotional or physical challenges. They disappear almost entirely for those who have the great misfortune to be born under violent totalitarian regimes or in desperately poor nations that lack infrastructure.
Even when these pathways DO lead a person to success - as they often do for the children of the wealthy and the middle class - they typically end before most children self-actualize. Our capitalistic system is designed to train us how to become adequate enough to enter the economic workplace and do okay in life. It doesn't encourage each of us to discover his or her own inner genius and nurture that to fruition, because our present half-system, which promotes the individual and neglects the larger collective has already grown so impoverished it needs the merely adequate energy of most of the able-bodied just to survive. To convince young people to cease aiming for self-actualization, we reward their bare bones development by training them to leverage adequacy to serve themselves and their family first, their close friends and the community second, and the larger society last - if they serve it at all. What we've failed to do is set any expectation that people have an ethical responsibility to gift of themselves back to the society that enabled them to achieve some measure of success. Perhaps that's because when we stunt a tree by starving it or forcing it to mature before its time, the limited fruit it produces won't be nearly enough to feed the animal kingdom.
That capitalistic nations don't ethically guide citizens toward serving the larger collective, combined with the way they reward selfishness, duplicity and greed, leads to a concentration of wealth in the hands of those few who manage to fully leverage their personal talents. The wealthy then hoard their money to protect themselves and to ensure a comfortable future for their offspring. Hoarding creates scarcity, which chokes off the pathways to success for the multitudes. That reduces the odds that our society as a whole will thrive. When only a few in a living system are happy while the majority are miserable, the system - as we know from biology - must either transform or collapse.
The global economic suffering we're observing today is symptomatic of the fact that a majority of people feel disenfranchised by their present system, which explains why they don't like to vote and don't want to pay taxes. In the West, that's the result of systems that originally placed too much emphasis on individuation and material success, and not enough on creating a healthy, sustainable society out of which enlightened, self-actualized people can consistently emerge.
The opposite approach, a system that inhibits personal self-actualization for the sake of the collective leads to totalitarianism applied through militarily enforced socialism, fascism and oppressive theocracies. We've witnessed how those forms of governance decimate free thought, hinder the exchange of knowledge and destroy artistic creativity. Enslaved people can't be stripped of their ability to think or imagine because that's an inherent aspect of human nature. Instead they must be made to fear using their innate abilities. That's because any capacity to imagine radical new ways of being and doing makes people dangerous to a state that depends on conformity for its survival. When imagination and freedom are suppressed too long however, the society loses its capacity to innovate, which means it can't address new challenges. The collapse of the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes testifies to the cancerous nature of a system that subverts individuation.
When we grasp that to date all our competing systems have been only half a design, it's becomes apparent that this endless war between the supporters of self-annihilation and the proponents of unfettered self-interest can't solve humanity's problems, no matter who wins. What's called for is a collective awakening to the realization that we are a both/and species, living in a both/and world. We are, by nature, imaginative, creative and unique life expressions, operating within a grander unified field; one whose abundance we are entitled to freely and fully draw upon in order to awaken our individual genius. Because we are entitled to draw upon its abundance, we are also beholden to gratefully pledge to it the excess fruits of our genius if we hope to thrive in a place of peace and prosperity.
That we've never before implemented a whole systems approach which supports the freedom of the individual while at the same time fostering our individual commitment to serve the unified field - and thus serve ourselves - is GOOD news! It points us in a radical new direction and offers a vision of what we might become if a majority (or even a large minority) of us discover the joy of becoming fully ourselves and then direct all our unleashed genius toward making life better for everyone and everything else around us - because that includes and benefits us over time.
The spiritual underpinning for all of this, the groundswell pulse of energy that is urging us to transform our failing economies, our governments, our educational systems, our judicial systems, our religious institutions and the way we interface with our planet and all other life forms, is flowing into humanity now in the form of a cosmic invitation to evolve. We're each being pressed by life itself to discover, hone and express ourselves as a beautifully unique note; then to express that note in human harmony. Achieve that, and what will be asked of us next is to play humanity's harmonic in concert with the rest of the living orchestra, in a way that renders the whole cosmic symphony grander and more beautiful than it was when we were playing out of tune in search of ourselves.
I, for one, can hardly wait to hear the melody.
An either/or approach to anything sets up a win/lose game. And when faced with a win/lose challenge, humanity's position (because we can be VERY stubborn creatures where our competing values and beliefs are concerned!) is to dig in our heels and fight to win the battle for our side, no matter the cost. While there are shades of gray in this present battle and nuances involved in every issue, when we distill down the fight to its fundamental polarity, the essence of it is an all out, no holds barred ideological war between the "no self other than god" camp and the "self is all there is" camp - which, ironically, will collectively leave us with a sense of loss no matter which side wins.
The question we must ask ourselves before this battle progresses much further is this: might we be fighting so strenuously because there are relative aspects of truth to BOTH these sides? What if the deeper truth is we are a both/and species, living in a both/and world? Might there truly BE a unified field that is indeed greater than us all (a higher cosmic intelligence, if you will) AND an existential material reality that is urging us, as uniquely individuated expressions, to be more, do more and know more as we intelligently evolve?
Having "tried on" that theory to see how it fits, I've been delighted to find that a great deal of peace, joy and opportunity for higher self-expression and self-actualization has arisen as I've deepened into the experience of myself as both/and being. As an individuated being, I have increasingly come to know myself as a highly creative, loving and talented person. That awareness feels both marvelous and joyful - when I direct my creative energy in service to other people, and encourage them to express their own genius in service to others as well. It feels awful - because it creates in me a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety - if I use my gifts to enrich myself at the expense of others. Knowing myself to be an inextricable part of a unified field has helped me understand why life works that way.
What I've come to believe we're being called to do as a species, as well as to personally experience and integrate at this stage of our evolution, is to SYNTHESIZE two apparent polarities: the cosmos as "all thing" and the cosmos as "no thing." All-thing (a material expression) and No-thing (a non-material field of infinite potential) are not competing truths or realities. Together they form a unified system; one that creatively self-expresses as an ever-changing collection of unique forms. It seems likely that what we are in fact part of is an infinite field of ideas, feelings and perspectives, eternally expressing and perfecting itself through its creative use of form and self-perception. That field both objectively experiences and subjectively knows itself as something greater than the simple sum of its parts across space and time.
That lives; therefore we live.
Interestingly enough, any simple study of biology teaches us that for any organism to thrive, no matter its size or complexity, the whole must be greater than the sum of its many parts. Otherwise there would be no reason for those previously independent units, which were already wholes unto themselves, to form a larger unit and dedicate part of their energy to the maintenance and support of that larger structure. Each one of us is an amazing example of how such smaller unique wholes (in the form of the 100,000,000,000 cells in your own body) come together to create a living human being, which - because we have been gifted the power of self-awareness - we KNOW without any doubt is greater than the simple sum of its many cellular parts.
If we apply this objectively experienced and subjectively known truth to the universe that created and contains us all, it becomes apparent that everything is based on that one fundamental principal. Everywhere we turn, we find smaller wholes that have come together to create something finer than a simple addition of parts. If that's true for a water molecule, a rock, an orchid, a beaver, a person and a planet, why wouldn't it also be true for the cosmos that in turn contains all these things, including us?
What's amazing is that this rational (mind-based explanation) yet gnostic (able to be experienced) synthesis of the all-thing and the no-thing, when embraced as the truth about ourselves and applied to all else, generates enough energy to resolve all our current conflicts by moving us not to one side or the other of the self versus no-self battlefield, but by transporting us beyond that battlefield to a brand new playground ripe with possibilities.
Once we accept there is truth on both sides of the debate, and that neither was ever entirely right or wrong, we understand the only way for this war to end well for any of us is for us all to fuse the two half-truths into a much grander understanding of life, out of which solutions to our challenges will naturally emerge.
For example, the bitter political debate we're engaged in exposes the fundamental conflict between a form of collective (no-self) totalitarianism - appearing in its benevolent form as a disempowering nanny socialist state, and in its malevolent form as a murderously fear-based fascist state; and a form of supreme individual (all-self) chaos - appearing in its benevolent state as an inequitable and socially irresponsible libertarianism, and in its malevolent state as destructive and deadly anarchy. While each side has been promoting the most benevolent form of its preferred system for quite some time, what we're most likely to end up with, presuming this war continues unabated, is the most malevolent form of one or the other. That's because all attempts at compromise will be overrun by increasing violence and fear, creating an environment that sets people up to embrace the extremes for the sake of simple survival.
Any of the approaches outlined above generate a few positives and a whole host of problems for humanity down the line, because they are all half-systems. Since problems expand over time unless they're corrected, embracing a half-system will inevitably trigger a need for us to either legislate away personal freedoms over time through some form of externally imposed governance (a shift toward totalitarianism) or to forcibly overturn the collective half by force to provide more personal freedom (a shift toward chaos.)
The fact is, we've already seen all four of these models in action, yet none has managed to succeed well enough to convince its own citizens it's the ultimate social solution. If none can convince a majority of their own citizens they work, they surely won't be successful in convincing others to adopt their ideology over the long haul. Additionally, what we're just now learning is that tweaking a model that has already failed at its core only causes that model to fail in a different fashion, but in a more spectacular way because the tweaking keeps it afloat for a longer time.
We can synthesize our political polarities by acknowledging that an individual can't thrive without belonging to a healthy collective that offers ALL its members - no matter the circumstances of their birth or their physical gifts, challenges or intellect - a wide open pathway to self-fulfillment and joy. Nor can we create a healthy collective unless a majority of its members are healthy, self-actualized and willing to contribute some reasonable amount of time and energy to the support and ongoing nourishment of the collective.
Combining the needs of the individual with the needs of the collective is what's required to develop a whole-system model. While modern culture has, over time, left behind the old economic models in which a person was either born into wealth or poverty and basically stayed there forever (peerage and caste systems) the new paths to success we've created have been mainly offered to the children of the wealthy, members of the social majority and the most enterprising and talented spirits born among us. The paths to success narrow considerably for poor and middle class children, the culturally or racially disenfranchised and those born with mental, emotional or physical challenges. They disappear almost entirely for those who have the great misfortune to be born under violent totalitarian regimes or in desperately poor nations that lack infrastructure.
Even when these pathways DO lead a person to success - as they often do for the children of the wealthy and the middle class - they typically end before most children self-actualize. Our capitalistic system is designed to train us how to become adequate enough to enter the economic workplace and do okay in life. It doesn't encourage each of us to discover his or her own inner genius and nurture that to fruition, because our present half-system, which promotes the individual and neglects the larger collective has already grown so impoverished it needs the merely adequate energy of most of the able-bodied just to survive. To convince young people to cease aiming for self-actualization, we reward their bare bones development by training them to leverage adequacy to serve themselves and their family first, their close friends and the community second, and the larger society last - if they serve it at all. What we've failed to do is set any expectation that people have an ethical responsibility to gift of themselves back to the society that enabled them to achieve some measure of success. Perhaps that's because when we stunt a tree by starving it or forcing it to mature before its time, the limited fruit it produces won't be nearly enough to feed the animal kingdom.
That capitalistic nations don't ethically guide citizens toward serving the larger collective, combined with the way they reward selfishness, duplicity and greed, leads to a concentration of wealth in the hands of those few who manage to fully leverage their personal talents. The wealthy then hoard their money to protect themselves and to ensure a comfortable future for their offspring. Hoarding creates scarcity, which chokes off the pathways to success for the multitudes. That reduces the odds that our society as a whole will thrive. When only a few in a living system are happy while the majority are miserable, the system - as we know from biology - must either transform or collapse.
The global economic suffering we're observing today is symptomatic of the fact that a majority of people feel disenfranchised by their present system, which explains why they don't like to vote and don't want to pay taxes. In the West, that's the result of systems that originally placed too much emphasis on individuation and material success, and not enough on creating a healthy, sustainable society out of which enlightened, self-actualized people can consistently emerge.
The opposite approach, a system that inhibits personal self-actualization for the sake of the collective leads to totalitarianism applied through militarily enforced socialism, fascism and oppressive theocracies. We've witnessed how those forms of governance decimate free thought, hinder the exchange of knowledge and destroy artistic creativity. Enslaved people can't be stripped of their ability to think or imagine because that's an inherent aspect of human nature. Instead they must be made to fear using their innate abilities. That's because any capacity to imagine radical new ways of being and doing makes people dangerous to a state that depends on conformity for its survival. When imagination and freedom are suppressed too long however, the society loses its capacity to innovate, which means it can't address new challenges. The collapse of the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes testifies to the cancerous nature of a system that subverts individuation.
When we grasp that to date all our competing systems have been only half a design, it's becomes apparent that this endless war between the supporters of self-annihilation and the proponents of unfettered self-interest can't solve humanity's problems, no matter who wins. What's called for is a collective awakening to the realization that we are a both/and species, living in a both/and world. We are, by nature, imaginative, creative and unique life expressions, operating within a grander unified field; one whose abundance we are entitled to freely and fully draw upon in order to awaken our individual genius. Because we are entitled to draw upon its abundance, we are also beholden to gratefully pledge to it the excess fruits of our genius if we hope to thrive in a place of peace and prosperity.
That we've never before implemented a whole systems approach which supports the freedom of the individual while at the same time fostering our individual commitment to serve the unified field - and thus serve ourselves - is GOOD news! It points us in a radical new direction and offers a vision of what we might become if a majority (or even a large minority) of us discover the joy of becoming fully ourselves and then direct all our unleashed genius toward making life better for everyone and everything else around us - because that includes and benefits us over time.
The spiritual underpinning for all of this, the groundswell pulse of energy that is urging us to transform our failing economies, our governments, our educational systems, our judicial systems, our religious institutions and the way we interface with our planet and all other life forms, is flowing into humanity now in the form of a cosmic invitation to evolve. We're each being pressed by life itself to discover, hone and express ourselves as a beautifully unique note; then to express that note in human harmony. Achieve that, and what will be asked of us next is to play humanity's harmonic in concert with the rest of the living orchestra, in a way that renders the whole cosmic symphony grander and more beautiful than it was when we were playing out of tune in search of ourselves.
I, for one, can hardly wait to hear the melody.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
