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Who is in Your Thoughts and Prayers?

May 14, 2011 //
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A few days ago a friend of mine forwarded me a link for a blog he thought I might like.  In it, the author was posing a question regarding the rising trend for people to make statements such as they will “pray for you” or “you are in their thoughts and prayers”.  Her question was – has this language of prayer simply become the generic way in which we show compassion?  Here’s the link to her full article.

I’ve certainly noticed this rising trend of people using references to “prayer” and “holding thoughts” as a means of showing care and concern.  However, I thought it was just my circle of friends.  After all, as a New Thought minister, the philosophy I teach (as well as everyone in my organization) is that thoughts are things which have power.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Consciousness, Featured Article, Positive Evolution, Science and Spirit

For Love and Money (Part Two)

December 6, 2010 //
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Last time we looked at how our culture teaches us to chase after money.  The one with the most money wins.  Yet, I suggested that we change how we view money – from seeing it as this external something to more of the divine energetic flow.  I’m not naïve – I realize changing this perception is not easy, so much of our culture reinforces external wealth is an indicator of our personal value.

I ended last time by suggesting we look at the phrase “the love of money is the root of all evil”.  Again, as stated previously, this phrase implies that the more we have this “emotional desire” to accumulate this external thing “money”, then the more we are inclined “to do bad things”.  What I want to consider this time is – “what is love?”  and “what is evil”?

Just as our perception of money is misdirected outward, so is our view of love.  What, you say?  Isn’t love an emotion that we feel?  Isn’t the fact that it’s an emotion mean that it’s inside us?  Yes, the emotion or feeling is something we identify as being within us, but that which has the power to give rise to this emotion or feeling is all too frequently an object separate and apart from ourselves.

We look “out there” and attach our love to people, things and experiences.  Too often we place conditions on our experience of love.  I will love you if you act a certain way such as loving me in return or doing as I say.  I will love my dinner if it is food I like.  I will love my vacation if it goes as I intended.  Love is all too often something we give and withhold in an attempt to control life out there.

Yet just as money does not buy us happiness, neither is our love truly dependent upon external conditions.  Again, this is not what our culture teaches us normally – but we can choose to experience love separate and apart from what goes on in our lives.  You can choose to “be love” in all circumstances, no matter what those around you do or say.

Can you love your children even if they make life choices different from you?  Can you love your lover as you watch them leave your life?  Can you love your life even if events are not what you want?  The fact is, if you really love your children, your lover or anyone else – then you simply love them and want them to be happy totally independent of their actions.  And, if you love your life in spite of any negative conditions, you may come to notice those conditions disappearing.

So love is truly not dependent on stuff out there.  More so, love is more than simply the emotion or feeling that we experience and label as “love”.  Love is really an energetic force, just as money is.  Love is a flow that moves through our lives, just as money.  Love is a force that binds us and connects us to that which is beyond us.

The truth for me is this: although we think we are entities separate and apart from one another, we are really all part of a great and wonderful “oneness”.  Money is an energetic flow that moves the abundance of life through this oneness, connecting us.  Love is an inner force that redirects our attention off of ourselves and out there to that which appears to be “other” from us, and in the process connecting us. 

As long as we believe that the experience of this flow is dependent on some “other” to which we have attached our attention, then we tend to stagnate the flow.  When we can delink our love as being dependent on this “other”, then we allow our love to flow freely.  When we simply “love”, then we move to a sweet space where we begin to experience the taste of “oneness”.  This undifferentiated sense of love breaks down our barrier of feeling separate and shifts us into a sense of connectedness.

This is why many mystics and philosophers have referred to love as an “evolutionary force”.  Our evolutionary path is a movement within our consciousness – from the lower levels within minerals, plants and lower animals to the place within humanity where we have self-awareness – we know that we know – to where we sense our place within the cosmos as conscious co-creators – to a return from where we originally began: knowing we are all one.  Love is that energetic force within us pushing us along to our remembrance.

This is why Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said that “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

So if money is an energetic flow of the abundance of life moving through us, and love is an energetic evolutionary force that is pulling us out of our sense of separation and back into our awareness of our unity, then what is “evil”?  As the Bible says – The love of money is the root of all evil.  If we link our experience of love to the accumulation of money, we are both limiting the power of love to bring us into the sense of connectedness with others and blocking its flow of abundance through the oneness of life. 

Anytime we block the flow of money or limit the flow of love or do anything at all that harms some aspect of the One, then we are really hurting ourselves.  Evil is any harmful action based in a forgetting that we are all One. 

Mark

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Categories Featured Article, Science and Spirit, Spirituality

What UFOs Can Teach Us

September 30, 2010 //
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No, sorry, this is not about grays with big eyes stepping out of their flying saucer and setting up a classroom…..rather, today we conclude a three-part series on maintaining a balance between an open mind and a healthy skepticism by looking at how our culture has handled the topic of UFOs.  What can we learn from humanity’s handling of the topic that we can take with us in our personal evolution of our consciousness?  

I remember being interested in UFOs as a kid.  I read anything about them I could get my hands on.  The mysterious possibility of extraterrestrial aliens visiting Earth excited my youthful mind.  As I got older, my interest in UFOs went dormant as I moved on to other mysteries – considering God and consciousness and contemplating why we exist.

I’ve been a member of the Institute of Noetic Sciences for several years.  If you read Dan Brown’s last novel “The Lost Symbol”, then you’re familiar with IONS.  The Institute studies the power of consciousness as well as some of those other fringe areas that interest me – psychic phenomenon and the like.

A year or two ago I listened to an interview by IONS scientist Dean Radin with historian Richard Dolan.  Dolan told of how his efforts to write a history of America’s intelligence community kept bumping him into information about its interest in UFOs and its disinformation campaign around them.  He decided to write a historical perspective on this topic and his extensive research led to the single planned volume becoming a trilogy.  At the time only the first had been published – I sent for it, read it and it rekindled in me a fascination of the topic.  Dolan has since published the second volume which I’ve also read.  I highly recommend both books.

Although I’ve never seen a UFO – I believe that UFOs exist, but I’m not a true “UFO believer” in the sense that I believe everything published on the topic.  There’s a lot of really strange stuff out there on the topic that’s even hard for me to swallow.  However, I do challenge anyone who labels themselves as a “skeptic” and then dismisses the entire area without a proper investigation.  Saying things like anyone who believes in UFOs has simply created a self deception based on their brain’ s tendency to find patterns or that they are all either hoaxes or misidentification of terrestrial phenomenon without really reviewing the evidence may be creating the “self deception” in their own mind.  Such denials really say more about the so-called skeptic’ s beliefs than they do about the existence of UFOs.  The skeptics should read Dolan’s books as well as a new one by Leslie Kean before they make such blanket assertions.

Kean’s book is entitled “UFOs – Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record”.  This investigative journalist who has written for many mainstream publications has spent the last 10 years researching the topic.  No fringe stuff here.  She does a good job of recounting some of the more fascinating UFO cases, especially those involving pilots, the military and other highly reputable sources.  The witnesses are impeccable.  Many offer their own writings as a part of this book.  Some governments around the world are more open about their investigation into the topic than the United States is and some of these officials offer details on some of their country’s more well-documented cases – including ones involving the UFOs leaving trace evidence.  It’s hard for me to see how someone could read this book and continue to deny that something is going on here.

To be clear, I’m not trying to convince anyone of the reality of UFOs.  Read the books and make up your own mind.  My point here is to consider why there is such a taboo in our culture in talking about them?  To say you “believe in UFOs” is tantamount to saying you are naive or crazy.   At a minimum, you get a laugh and then dismissed.  There appears to be only two extreme positions on the topic—-”believers” who are scoffed at and “skeptics” who go out of their way to dismiss the topic.  Why is this?  How can we move to a middle position of being open but realistic?  How can we not believe everything or dismiss everything out of hand?  Sometimes I think some true believers are reacting to or pushing back against the mainstream dismissing of the topic.  They go to the opposite extreme because the prevalent viewpoint is so much into denial.  What do you think?

In the last section of Kean’s book, she examines why the UFO topic continues to be taboo among mainstream science and the United States government.  She includes a fascinating essay by a couple of political scientists who outline the common arguments provided by UFO skeptics and why such arguments are false (which I’m not going to go into here – go read the book).  Beyond that, these political scientists offer an interesting political take on why governmental authorities are so against giving any validity to the study of the UFO phenomenon.  They point to three threats to our existing system.

The first threat is that if a UFO is truly unidentified, then some very powerful “other” might actually exist representing a potential physical threat.  Their ability to visit Earth clearly implies a vastly superior technology and our government’s inability to protect us if their interests are hostile.  The second threat is that if extraterrestrials are real then it might create pressure for a world government, something which our current nation-state governments don’t favor.  The third threat is that the possibility of extraterrestrials raises questions regarding our assumptions that only human beings have the ability and authority to govern and determine their collective fate.  Modern states are able to command loyalty in resources from their subjects on the assumption that they have been granted power by our virtue of our “humanness”.  This is an interesting take on the subject which I had never heard. The authors conclude that it is in our government’s best interest to maintain the taboo in spite of the growing evidence that such a position is pure foolishness.

I might add that a lot more reasons are offered elsewhere by many other people as to why our government, religious leaders and scientists continue to deny the phenomenon.  Many say our government already has evidence of extraterrestrials and is withholding that information from us.  There’s a lot of evidence to support that view even though I don’t want to believe it.  Many say that our traditional religious beliefs about the relationship of man and God will be called into question by the discovery of life on other planets.  Our scientists may discover that some of our cherished beliefs about the creation of the universe and the powers that fuel it will be called into play if ET is discovered.

So what can we learn from all of this?  Why bring all this “UFO stuff” up?  Well, as I have been discussing for the past 2 articles, there is a barrier to our evolutionary growth if we become so mired in our beliefs that we cannot be open to new concepts and ideas.  If the basic tenets of our worldview are threatened by some anomaly that does not fit and we find ourselves bending over backwards to deny or explain it away, we need to stop and ask why.

There is a tendency that once one has established what they believe, they will go to great lengths not to have to change their paradigm.  Five hundred years ago, religious leaders denied the findings of Copernicus because it did not fit their belief structure.  Today, some scientists do the same with UFOs, psi research, the power of consciousness, and spirituality.   People who have invested a career in touting a certain belief have a lot to lose if they are open to letting go of that belief.  And, let’s don’t forget that there are great social pressures to fit in and believe as others believe.  Going along is easy. It takes courage to buck the beliefs of the majority when you don’t agree with them.

So my question to you is this—moving beyond simply the topic of UFOs—–where do you find your mind closing down?  Where do you feel that your cherished beliefs are being questioned by evidence to the contrary?  That is the area you need to lean into fully.  Challenge yourself.  Explore the possibilities beyond the boundaries of your beliefs.  This is the juicy area where your inner self is calling you to evolve.  Go for it! 

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Consciousness, Culture, Featured Article, Politics, Science and Spirit

A Cautionary Tale of the Skeptic with a Closed Mind

September 27, 2010 //
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In the last article, I reminded us of  how important it is to our personal evolution to maintain a true open mind balanced with a healthy dose of real skepticism.  Today, I offer a cautionary tale of calling yourself a skeptic when that’s solely a disguise for dogmatically maintaining the current paradigm.  

A website I monitor suggested watching a certain video from the TED website (link to TED website).  Many of you have probably viewed a TED video.  They’re usually uplifting talks with a lot of positive, future oriented messages.  I’ve generally found them entertaining and enlightening.

This video was a mildly entertaining talk by “Skeptic” magazine editor Michael Shermer.  His goal was to dismiss those at the fringes of science and reason who believe in UFOs and psi phenomenon by saying that holding such beliefs is simply a self-deception of our brain seeking to find patterns and meaning.  Unfortunately in this talk, Shermer not only makes leaps of logic but also falls prey to the self-deception he outlines.

Briefly, here are the main points from his talk — – our brains are hardwired to seek patterns.  Hence, there is a tendency within our brains to find meaningful patterns in both times when there is actually meaning and also when it’s just meaningless “noise”.  There is an evolutionary reason for this he says.  There are two errors that we can make when it comes to our ability to perceive patterns.  The first is believing a pattern is real when it’s not.  The second is not believing a pattern is real when it is.  Evolution has tended to eliminate those who make the second kind of error, as real threats not believed to be threats would lead to death and failure to pass along our genes.  Hence, survival of the fittest has tended to favor those of us who make the first kind of error — seeing patterns where they are not.  This is all very interesting and makes good sense.

Shermer then goes on to point out our desire to control life.  He says the more we feel out of control, the greater our tendency to seek patterns where they may not be.  Finding patterns gives us meaning and a sense of control.  OK, sounds reasonable.  He then cites some studies that have found a correlation between individuals who have a greater tendency to believe in the paranormal and their higher likelihood of seeing incorrect patterns in degraded images. 

Shermer also describes some brain studies that have found certain drugs which impact areas of the brain that correlate to our ability to see patterns.  Our brains need a healthy balance of these drugs so that we can see meaningful patterns when they occur.  An imbalance can either lead to seeing patterns everywhere — leading us into madness – or an inability to see patterns – leading to a lack of creativity.

Finally he points out that what we are thinking about can influence the patterns we see.  No great surprise here.  He shows you that if you are thinking about sex already, that opens you to seeing sexual patterns where they may not be.  Pairing one clear idea with a nebulous one tends to direct how you perceive the second concept.  He then moves into a concept he calls “agenticity” — a tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, etc. He says this explains our tendency to believe in angels, God, UFOs, conspiracy theories and the like.  Maybe, maybe not.

If you’re watching closely, then you can see that Shermer uses faulty logic.  Let’s review: (1) our brains are hardwired to seek patterns; (2) some people may see patterns where they are not; (3) in some studies people with a higher tendency to believe in the paranormal are more likely to see incorrect patterns; (4) an imbalance of certain drugs correlates to our brains inability to maintain a healthy balance of seeing patterns; (5) what we are already thinking about tends to determine what we see – therefore, paranormal things are incorrect patterns detected by people with a tendency to seek such meaning. 

Excuse me?  Just because science shows our brains have an evolutionary purpose for seeking patterns and that our perception can be fooled into seeing patterns where they are not – this does not allow us to make the stupendously leap in logic to dismiss everything that does not fit your worldview.  One might consider that Shermer falls prey to the same desire to see a pattern where it’s not – some people believe in UFOs and other phenomenon (which I, Michael Shermer know aren’t real) while some people tend to see patterns where they are not – must be connected – a pattern!  Shermer even employs the not-so-subtle trick of using a visual of a UFO in attempting to link it with seeing appropriate patterns just as he had done with the sexual images.  It’s playful, but deceptive.

I don’t mean to pick on Michael Shermer.  He seems like a nice guy, somebody you could have a beer with and enjoy the conversation.  However, most of the time I’ve heard him speak he fights hard to maintain the status quo of a materialistic worldview and is not truly open to other possibilities.  I get it that he doesn’t believe in angels, God, UFOs, psi phenomenon or anything else that threatens his view of science and the material world.  He obviously has a great distaste for the fringes where things don’t fit his view.  And, let’s don’t forget—it’s in his economic best interest to continue to deny the reality of such stuff or he might lose his “skeptic’ s license”.  Afterall, this is his “shtick”.

I personally don’t care whether Shermer believes in any of this fringe stuff or not.  For much of it, I’m not always sure what I believe.  But I do think he offers us a cautionary tale about how we can be so stuck in the dogma of our current belief structure that we generate a gigantic blind spot that keeps us from growing.  Shermer’s a smart guy but he’s no real skeptic. In my opinion, he doesn’t truly have an open mind.

Someone with an open mind actually seeks out and reviews evidence that contradicts their current worldview.  They challenge themselves and their beliefs.  This is the exciting area of our growing edge where our existing beliefs create friction against a sense of newness and change.  This is where all of us who truly want to grow and evolve need to hang out.  I’ll see you there.

Next time… A recent book on UFOs raises some questions about why we cling to our limiting beliefs and offers us lessons on our evolution. 

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Consciousness, Culture, Featured Article, Politics, Science and Spirit

Can We Keep an Open Mind and Be Skeptical?

September 25, 2010 //
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I love hanging out on the edge near the borders of our knowledge….out in the fringe areas where you encounter people who tend to consider the wildest things.  This is the juicy place of psi research, consciousness studies, UFOs and paranormal phenomenon.  It’s in these “growing edges” where we make our most exciting discoveries.

Today we embark on a three-part journey around these fringes of science and reason… Along the way we will be considering open minds, skepticism, our need for seeing patterns, personal evolution, UFOs and the like.  The truth is out there, but only if we are open to receiving it.

We all hold an established paradigm of how the world works based on our education, culture and life experiences.  Most of us primarily subscribe to a scientific viewpoint of how the world works.  Empirical observation and measurement has brought great advancements to our modern lives.  But if we’ re not careful, this perspective can silently turn into dogma and limit our growth.

Religious dogma in the 1500s demanded that we see the Earth as the center of the universe.  Astronomers had to go to great pains to try to explain the odd orbits of the planets they observed in order to make the data fit the established paradigm.  Copernicus challenged the worldview by proposing that the earth rotated around the sun but out of fear held his views silently until near the time of his death.  It was still many years later before his “fringe” views became our mainstream belief.

Although historians point to Copernicus frequently as the beginning of the scientific revolution, I believe his story can also serve as a cautionary reminder about how a prevalent worldview can serve to limit our evolution if we’re not careful.  One trait that I believe is important to our personal evolution is having both a true open mind balanced with a healthy dose of skepticism. 

Balance is important.  If you get out of balance, you can either become a “believer” who accepts all kinds of wild concepts without proper discernment or a so-called “skeptic” who misuses that descriptor as they go out of their way to deny anything that doesn’t fit the current materialist paradigm.  A healthy mix is to have a true open mind that really considers possibilities that may not fit the current scientific position.  One may be a skeptic in name only and misusing that term if they are employing great pains to explain away scientific anomalies in order to maintain the existing paradigm.  Many things done these days in the name of “skepticism” reminds me of the astronomers who offered odd planetary orbits 500 years ago fighting to maintain the status quo.

So my call to you is this—for your highest personal evolution—can you maintain a continous balance between having a true open mind and a real sense of skeptical discernment?  Can you do this even if your most cherished beliefs are called into question?  Can you?

Next time we look at the cautionary tale of the skeptic with a closed mind…

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Consciousness, Culture, Featured Article, Politics, Science and Spirit

Transcending the Third Dimension — Part Two

August 4, 2010 //
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transcending the 3rd dimensionToday, we continue our self dialogue in exploring our evolution through the third dimension and our opportunity to transcend it…..  (Click here to read part one)

So picking up where we left off–regarding our evolution — you say that ultimately humanity will transcend the third dimension.  What exactly does that mean?

Well, in my thinking, it means that some aspect of us will move beyond the limitations created by living in a world of time and space where things appear to be separate from one another.  Although I certainly have no insider knowledge about the characteristics of life beyond the third dimension, I have to imagine that it entails leaving behind the need for a physical body as we know it, as well as the experience of linear time.  My belief is that the aspect of our being that we carry with us from the third dimension relates to our consciousness.

So is this transcendence done by each of us individually?

Good question.  On a certain level, I believe that it is.  I believe that each of us grow and evolve at an individual level that leads to our personal transcendence beyond the third dimension.  This personal evolution is in consciousness.  However, I also believe that as an individual evolves to higher levels of consciousness, such levels bring awareness of the interconnectedness of all life and an expanded circle of care and concern for others.  This awareness brings a desire to serve others, a desire that seems natural from the viewpoint that we are all one.  This intent to serve others frequently includes a desire to assist others in the expansion of their consciousness.  Therefore, in this light, one person’s evolution assists the group’ s consciousness.  Also, we might consider that an individual’ s consciousness is part of the collective consciousness of all humanity, so that one’s growth also contributes to everyone’s growth in that regard.

Must we really take an active role in our personal evolution?  Won’t we just naturally “transcend the third dimension” when our bodies experience the process of death?

There are some spiritual teachers who say that — that the transition from this life to our next experience allows us to automatically release the limitations imposed upon us by our identification with our bodies and our sense of separation from one another.  Yet these same teachers usually share that some type of sense of personal identity is carried with us into our next level of expression.  Although the release of the body may bring an expansion of our awareness, such expansion doesn’t eliminate the necessity for our growth during our time in the third dimension.  The higher our growth while here now would seem in my way of thinking to be beneficial.  On the one hand, the greater our wisdom at the point of transition, there might be the opportunity for enhanced assimilation of our new expanded awareness.  On the other hand, if as some spiritual teachers and traditions suggest — that reincarnation back into the third dimension reoccurs until we learn our lessons here, then the greater our wisdom at the point of transition brings with it increased likelihood that we have “completed” our experience here.

Okay, then what must each of us do to transcend the third dimension and evolve personally? 

Well, the simple answer is be aware of this process, set an intention to further your evolution, create a vision of what your personal evolution looks like and then act in a manner that is in alignment with that vision.  Your vision and your related actions must incorporate all aspects of your life — your inner work and your outer work, your work on yourself and your work in relation to others.  I find philosopher Ken Wilber’s integral practice is helpful here in understanding the various parts of your life in which you need to consider your plan for growth.  Working on your shadow self is essential.  Some type of spiritual practice that builds within you an awareness of the oneness of life is key.  Other spiritual teachers frequently offer other specific guidance.  My suggestion is that we use logic to build our plan, but that we also use the vast power of our intuition to choose the path that is best for us individually.

That’s the simple answer?

Yes.  Obviously it sounds simple but that doesn’t make it easy.  Yet there is a more complex piece to our evolution that we need to consider, in my opinion.  Our physical nature has evolved through the third dimension for thousands of years.  That process has hardwired within us certain factors that have served us along our evolutionary path but now create barriers as we seek to evolve further.  Some consider these factors to be coded into our DNA, others say it’s part of our collective consciousness.  Either way, these structures keep us with one foot firmly planted in the third dimension even as some aspect of us calls us to higher levels of awareness.

What are some of these structures that have served us but now limit us?

There are parts of humanity that may be considered animalistic.  Consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and their lower levels.  We have base needs where we seek to meet basic physiological needs such as air, water, etc. Beyond those needs we seek basic safety and security for ourselves — shelter, procreation to continue the species and so. Next Maslow says we seek to create a sense of belonging with others and a desire to experience love.  We must consider that for thousands of years, meeting each of these needs served an evolutionary purpose — we continued to live and thrive and reproduce.  Yet our hardwiring to meet these needs keeps us stuck in sensing the need to compete against others for what appear to be limited resources — food, water, land, money, sexual partners, power, possessions that make life easier, etc. Although at some level we may be called to transcend these desires, our third dimensional hardwiring keeps bringing us back to them.

So how do we overcome this hardwiring?

Well it comes back to the simple answer — awareness, intention, vision and action.  If we’re not aware of how our third dimensional evolutionary process has created both these gifts and challenges, then in our ignorance we will continue to ignore them and never overcome them.  We will continue to live our lives in competition and struggle, seeking to fill the bottomless pit of needs that can never be satiated, keeping our attention and focus on the lack and limitation and growing more of the same.

Is there anything else we need to understand in moving beyond the third dimension?

Yes.  We need to understand what many mystics and philosophers have pointed out to us — the creative power of our thoughts–thoughts are things.  Evolution has allowed consciousness to make a critical leap within humanity, we have become aware of the fact that we are aware.  With that, we have also moved into the awareness that the consciousness embedded within us is actually the creative power of the divine — and that through our free will choice we can use that power for destructive purposes or creative purposes.  We need to learn to harness that vast power within us for good, for ourselves and for others.  We need to remember the truth that we are interrelated to everyone else.  We need to grasp that on an intellectual level and then embody it into our emotions and choices.  Next we need to release our attachment to all the trappings of the third dimension.  To be clear, yes, let’s enjoy the vast array of beauty and bounty of life here on planet Earth.  It truly is a gift.  But attachments to all that is here will keep us stuck here.  Finally, we need to be aware of the evolutionary process and our role in it.  We need to recognize that we are conscious co-creators in the process.  As we grow and evolve personally, we need to consider how we might use the power of our thoughts and intentions for the greater good of all so that we not only complete our individual third dimensional experience but assist others on their path as well.

So are we really continuing to evolve?

Yes, I believe so.  As mentioned previously, this evolution is more in our consciousness.  We become more aware.  Another word for this is to say we become enlightened.  Evolution’s next step for us is in consciousness, awareness, enlightenment.

So where does religion or spirituality fit into this?

In my opinion, religion represents the formalized rules, dogma and organizations that have evolved to point humanity back towards this divine unity.  To that degree that have served a useful purpose.  Yet they are tainted by humanity’s animalistic base needs and thus have limited us simultaneously by dividing us and keeping us separate from one another.  One must consider this — does a religions’ stressing of their rules, their sacred texts, the specialness of their group, their discouragement of marriage outside their group, and their way being “the only way to God” serve to unite us as a people or divide us?  More often than not such thinking brings more divisiveness and less love.  Such characteristics of religion have even encouraged violence and war. Is this the next logical step for humanity?  Is this our highest possibility as a people? Spirituality, on the other hand, implies a direct experience of unity.  Spirituality seeks us to have a direct link to the divine without any intermediary such as religion.  Religion may have served our evolution but it is spirituality will take us to the next level.  Spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation seek to create within us our own personal experience of God.  Such experience moves us into higher levels of care and concern for our fellow mankind as well as assisting us in releasing attachments to third dimensional desires.  Hence, as mentioned, a routine spiritual practice of communing with a sense greater than our smallness is essential to transcending the third dimension.

Next time we conclude this discussion as we consider humanity’s collective evolution and its shared transcendence of the third dimension…

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Consciousness, Featured Article, Science and Spirit, Spirituality

Transcending The Third Dimension — Part One

July 31, 2010 //
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Today, we use the time tested method of the self dialogue to explore very quickly humanity’s evolution through the third dimension and our opportunity to transcend it.

First off, what you mean by the “third dimension”?

The third dimension is this physical reality in which we find ourselves living. The sense that I am right here and you are over there, that I am separate and apart from everything else, and that I am moving through all of this other stuff in a linear experience of time are all aspects of the third dimension. All of the physical matter and energy that we experience in a world of space and time where everything has its distinct location in a distinct moment is all an aspect of the third dimension.

Why does the third dimension exist?

To me, it exists as a sort of school or playground where growth and experiences can occur. It’s a place where Spirit or ultimate oneness can allow aspects of itself to divide up and sense themselves as being separate and have experiences of such separation. It’s a place that we move through on our way back to oneness and unity.

How did we get here?

That question can be answered a couple of ways. As many mystics and sages have pointed out, if God or Spirit or oneness or infinite intelligence (or whatever name you wish to give ultimate reality) knows and senses everything that ever is or ever was or ever will be all in the one instant of the holy moment, then what experience remains that is unknown? Their answer was that infinite intelligence was called to divide itself up, not in reality but only in awareness, placing aspects of itself in compartmentalized pockets that considered themselves separate from the other compartmentalized pockets that considered themselves separate. The end result was something called “multiplicity within the unity”, the sense of multiple things that are ultimately united in one. These compartmentalized pieces of Spirit were thrown into the third dimension so that spirit could have the experience of separation and all that comes with that — relationships with other separate things and free will to make choices of one thing over another. Traditional religion often refers to this process as “the fall” — we lived in perfection in oneness but fell into the world of duality, the world of good and bad, right and wrong.

Then what is the other way in which you can describe we came to be here?

This is where science comes in. It describes our third dimensional origin as coming from “the Big Bang”. Although science is silent for the most part on what preceded this beginning moment, current scientific thinking says that all physical matter was contained in a very hot, very dense area which exploded outward very quickly. At the moment of this expansion, all of the physical laws that we have since “discovered” already existed. One such law was gravity which acted upon the unevenness in this soupy plasma to begin bringing matter together into very hot and dense stars containing hydrogen and helium. Through a process of collapse and expansion caused by gravity, stars went through a lifecycle that ultimately created the other elements and cast them out into space. Through time, gravity brought together dense pockets of matter such as planets who moved into gravitational orbits around other stars. Certain planets developed conditions favorable for third dimensional life to evolve. The process of evolution was also embedded in everything from the moment of the Big Bang. This process favored life to build up in greater and greater degrees of complexity, from single cell organisms to more complex organisms and on up the chain to humanity.

How did life come from inert matter?

That’s a magical question that science really doesn’t answer. The common description is that physical conditions simply arose that were conducive for “life to emerge”. One has to consider that the potential for this emergence always existed. One has to wonder, how and why did that potential get embedded into this dimension?

So how do these two stories, the fall from unity into multiplicity and our physical evolutionary path from the Big Bang, interrelate?

Well, as I see it, Spirit’s creation of the multiplicity for the experience it offered began with the creation of the third dimension via the Big Bang. Infinite intelligence created all matter and all laws (including gravity and evolution) in that first moment, embedding itself into everything. It has allowed these aspects of Itself to evolve and to experience all that that evolutionary process entails. This evolutionary aspect of the third dimension not only allowed planets to form, but life to emerge on the planets and from life, consciousness to emerge.

What is consciousness and how did it emerge?

Another one of those magical questions. What consciousness is has been the subject of philosophers and scientists for a long time. Some even question its existence as real. The great irony, of course, is that such questioning is created within that person’s consciousness. We humans experience consciousness as our self-awareness — that part of us that assimilates the combination of our sensory input, our thoughts and our memories to create this persona or ego that we sense as ourselves. Stop for a moment and ask yourself “who am I?” Most likely the picture you come up with is this bundle that includes a physical body and a sense of its awareness of itself. That awareness is your experience of consciousness. You can only know your experience of it. You can’t know mine although you imagine that my experience is similar to yours. Yet we can also imagine that some aspect of this consciousness is also experienced by other animals. I know my dog has consciousness of some type. So science tells us (when it chooses to discuss the subject at all) that consciousness “emerged” at some point in the evolutionary process. Where that might be is subject to debate. But again, one has to consider and wonder about the fact that the potential existed from the Big Bang onward for the emergence of consciousness.

Where do you think consciousness emerged?

I happen to believe what some philosophers, mystics and a few scientists have been saying — consciousness was there all along. It is only our experience of it that has emerged. Consciousness is embedded in everything. It is in the smallest bits of matter and is in all energy. There is nothing that does not contain “consciousness”. Even subatomic particles and single cell organisms have a degree of consciousness. What is it within them that gives them “agency”, the ability to hold themselves as distinct and interact appropriately with the rest of the world? That “something” is the consciousness or intelligence embedded within them.

But wait, you’re making consciousness sound like Spirit?

That’s right. Spirit is consciousness. The One Consciousness imbedded that consciousness in everything. Consciousness is, as they say, “the ground of all Being”. It is the connecting aspect of the universe that allows everything to be created and experienced. Consciousness is not a by-product of our brains as many scientist seem to believe. Consciousness is the underlying field that gives rise to all matter including our brains. That piece of us that experiences consciousness is our tasting the oneness from which we sprang. The evolutionary process by which matter built up higher degrees of consciousness leading to humanity crossing a threshold into self-awareness is part of our return to oneness. If we can imagine all of our little individual pockets of consciousness being reunited into a single awareness (a stretch for our little minds, I agree), then we can get a sense of consciousness at the level of Spirit.

So then what’s next for humanity in this process? How do we continue our evolution and return back into unity from which we came? How do we transcend the third dimension?

There are several layers to the answers to these questions. First, there is the role that each of us play in our own personal evolution which must be considered. Hence, each of us must ask ourselves — what must I do to transcend the third dimension and evolve personally? Second, there is the process whereby humanity is evolving from individuals on their own path to a collective humanity evolving at a societal worldwide level as well as in our collective consciousness. How is this process playing out and what is our role in contributing to it? Furthermore, behind all of this is a basic assumption that we wish to transcend the third dimension. Is this true? Humanity is certainly at an interesting point in its evolution.

We will look at these layers in part two next time.

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Consciousness, Featured Article, Science and Spirit, Spirituality

Where Were the Books on the Starship Enterprise?

July 28, 2010 //
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future of readingThink about it.  Do you recall Kirk or Spock reading a hardcopy book?  Hard-core Trekkies might be able to point out an episode where a physical book was used, but it certainly doesn’t stand out in my memory.  What I recall is that every time they needed information, some device provided it.

I’ve seen a lot written in the past few months about this transition we’re experiencing in relation to how we receive printed content.  The rise of e-books is ringing the death toll for hard books.  The increased use of the Internet and smart phones is supposedly rewiring our brains such that we skim content and follow hyperlinks at the expense of reading fully on one subject.  I discussed some of this last week (see “Casting a Wide Net Versus Going Deep“).

Although a lot has been written mourning the death of the book and the perils of our inability to maintain focus on one subject, I don’t share those concerns.  Humanity has a history of adopting new technology that brings both benefits and unintended consequences.  New technology always has the opportunity to serve us or enslave us.  Choice always comes into play.  Our intentions are always important.

My wife and I recently purchased new iPhone 4′s.  We are having a blast adopting these tools into our lives.  This has led to us both purchasing e-books in the Kindle format and reading them on our phones.  In addition, I recently subscribed to a magazine only in digital format using a service called Zinio.  I have to admit that I had to overcome a little bit of hesitation in letting go of receiving a tangible, physical book and magazine for my money.  Yet I have to also admit that I really like reading content in the new formats.

I still have plenty of books stacked around me.  Those of you who can identify with the experience of receiving reading material in these dual methods join me as members of this unique transitional generation.  Experts say that the generations following us will be shifting more and more to purely digital content.  Our grandchildren will be living the life of Kirk and Spock.

Is this a “bad thing”?  It’s easy to think that if you’re like me — a lover of books.  But is it really?  There is a great article in the July 26, 2010, issue of Christian Science Monitor entitled “”Is Tech Rewiring Our Thinking?” that’s worth reading (link to article).  The article quotes Harvard researcher David Weinberger who points out that books “are not the shape of knowledge” but rather “they’re a limitation on knowledge”.  He points out that a book is a single author presenting their ideas and came about simply based on the limitations of paper publishing.  It’s just one way of providing information.  The Internet and hyperlinks represent another method — one that is in a sense more natural.

Think about this — your natural method of gathering information from your environment involves all of your senses working in a 3-D world picking up input, discerning what is worthwhile in this moment and what is not, then deciding which direction to next turn your senses.  Sometimes your senses and choices may follow a linear path “like a book”, but you are always open to moving in a new direction at a moment’s notice based on new information.

Life in the current moment is more like Internet browsing than it is like following a book from beginning to end.  Yet as we look back on the story of our life, that history seems more like a chronological book.  It’s no wonder that we naturally gravitate to the Internet and the ability it gives us to skip around based on in the moment discernment.  Yet our nostalgia for books seems natural as well.

So let’s enjoy our books and let’s enjoy these new electronic methods as well.  They are both gifts in this life.  Let’s don’t bemoan the death of books but rather rejoice in how the new methods expand our ability to effortlessly tap into the collective wisdom of humanity, connect us with people and cultures around the planet, and allow us to more greatly experience the “global brain” as well as the “global heart”.

Finally, let’s don’t forget the role our personal intention plays in the use of any technology.  Books can grow our wisdom and serve to connect us or they can serve to misinform us, divide us and keep us separate from one another.  New technology offers the same gifts as well as the same cautions.  Each of us as “conscious individuals” can serve the planet by using the new technologies to bring us closer to a sense of oneness and interconnectedness and reminding others to do the same.  In doing so we can all have a role in taking humanity boldly to where it’s never been before.  

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Consciousness, Culture, Entertainment, Featured Article, Science and Spirit

Our Fingers Point to the Moon Just As Our Religions Point to God

May 17, 2010 //
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Boston University professor of religion Stephen Prothero’s essay in a May 17 edition of the Christian Science Monitor (Stop Thinking That All Religions Are Essentially the Same) surprised me to the degree he misses the mark by dismissing what mystics and Huston Smith mean regarding the ultimate unity of religions and his failure to understand the role of worldviews in determining our spiritual beliefs.

Many parts of his commentary, I believe we can all agree upon.  Are all religions the same?  Just as Prothero discusses, the answer is no.  Has our focus on these differences caused humanity difficulties?  The answer is obviously yes.  Do we collectively need to develop a realistic view of religion so that we can be respectful of our differences yet through healthy dialogue “agree to disagree” on those details?  The answer is yes.

Although Prothero’s students may be allergic to arguing over their religious differences (a fact he believes is indicative of the “straight jacket of religious agreement” caused by accepting the unity of religions), much of Prothero’s essay outlines how much of the world’s religious conflict is not bound by such a belief.  Both the religious conflicts described, his students avoidance of such conflict as well as Prothero’s judgment of both are all representative of different worldviews. 

What’s called for here is to step out of the situation and put on what philosopher Ken Wilber would call an integral viewpoint.  Individuals bound by seeing life through a pre-rational mythic lens will accept at all cost the truth of their religious beliefs even if it leads to conflict.  Individuals who have grown into a pluralistic post-rational way of viewing life will place the most emphasis on the rights of others to believe as they believe.  Individuals whose worldview is rational will totally dismiss the other worldviews as not being based in “reality” without realizing how their lens is defining for them what that reality is.  And, more often than not, that reality is externally based upon things that can be seen and measured without taking into account an equally valid inner reality.

Using an integral viewpoint allows us to see how humanity is evolving — both internally and externally. Our outward expression of religion is evolving from the high degree of dogma and fighting over differences towards a growing tolerance and hopefully to the need to drop the attention on differences altogether.  Our inner awareness of God or Spirit is also evolving too — from an external God who is different from faith to faith to our sense of a relationship with a power and intelligence that transcends all differences.    Our worldviews are evolving to greater levels of acceptance of our diversity within this unity. 

The Buddhists have a saying that we should focus our attention on the moon, not the fingers pointing at the moon.  As Prothero focuses us upon all of the fingers of religion, of course we all see differences.  Are all religions, that is the “fingers pointing”, the same?  No. Much of humanity’s current viewpoints are at levels of awareness where our focus is on these differences.  Mystics and Huston Smith, when they discuss the convergence of religion, their focus is not upon the religions being the same, but rather upon where they are all pointing — the “moon”, that which is beyond words — the one God or Spirit.

Mark

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Categories Consciousness, Featured Article, Science and Spirit, Spirituality
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