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Chunk Change

April 10, 2011 //
2

We all know change is hard sometimes.  Change is especially hard when were going against a long-held ingrained habit.  We try to make a change and in a few days, we’re right back where we were.  Such is the destiny of many a New Year’s resolutions!

Of course, there is a technique which we all know about which can assist us if we are truly serious about making modifications in our life.  The aid is simply to look at the end result of where we want to go, to break it down into small manageable goals, then to work on the first goal over and over until we master it.  In other words, we create a small “chunk” that moves us in the direction of our ultimate intention and we make a habit out of that chunk.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know!  Yet there are two major obstacles for putting this plan in place.  The first – our goal seems so big and intimidating that we don’t have a clue about how to “chunk it up” into smaller pieces.  Related to this is the fact that even if we can create intermediate milestones, they don’t seem to give us the emotional satisfaction we seek from the end game and therefore don’t really motivate us.  The second obstacle – acting on that first task repeatedly until it becomes a part of what we do.  The best intentions frequently fade away after a few days.

I remember years ago one of my spiritual teachers advising my class that we need to spend some time each day in inner reflection or meditation.  If we truly want to turn our attention away from the outer world and move into an awareness of an inner world, then we have to spend some time each day actually in that inner world!  Of course the Catch-22 was that we are so busy in the outer world, we all wondered where we were going to find time to meditate.  The advice of our teacher – take 5 minutes each day to meditate.  Surely we could carve that much time out of each day.  His suggestion – find a consistent time, then do it until it becomes a habit.  Then expand from that beginning to more and more time each day.  I can assure you this works as it helps me become a habitual meditator.

I read recently where an individual who helps people reduce their clutter and clean their houses teaches people a technique to overcome their paralysis when they are faced with overwhelming messes.  The trick – identify some area of your house that needs cleaning, commit to doing it for 5 minutes, and after that amount of time you can decide whether to quit or continue.  After all, it’s just 5 minutes!  It tricks you into starting and typically you continue on beyond that time.  And – even if you don’t – you have five minutes worth of progress to feel good about.

The point is to find some early success to build upon.  This is the law of attraction in action.  If in our minds we are overwhelmed by a goal in front of us, then all we can attract is more of an unmet goal.  If we see a small success, then our attention is focused upon our progress and we get more of the same.

So here’s your task – where’s the change in your life that you just can’t seem to get started on?  Where are you called to do or be something different and all you seem to notice is that you are not making any progress in that direction?  Once you identify it – break it into chunks and get started working on that first chunk.  Make a commitment to act on that chunk each day until you master it.  Here’s some examples to get you thinking:

You want to eat better?  Set a goal to eat one additional servings of vegetables per day.  Take one unhealthy food you’re eating currently and either eliminate it from your diet or reduce how much you eat.

You want to exercise?  Create a routine you can do in 5 minutes and do it each day as part of getting ready.  Get a pedometer and wear it – try to increase your steps each day.

You want to write a book?  Set a goal to write at least something for certain amount time each day, even if it’s just a paragraph or two.  Create a blog site and write a short blog each day.  If that’s too much, write something once a week.

You want to learn a foreign language?  Find five minutes and practice each day with a foreign language computer program.  Put foreign language CDs in your car and listen to them.

You want more friends in your life?  Set a goal to take a few moments each day to appreciate your own company.  Reach out and connect with someone everyday.

You get the idea.  Chunk it up and make the change!

Peace and blessings!

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Change Agent, Featured Article, Positive Evolution

Life is like a…?

April 2, 2011 //
2

Like what?  Bowl of cherries… the optimistic refrain from an early 20th-century song?  A box of chocolates… as Forrest Gump proclaimed?  What is life like to you?

Recently, we offered that many people currently believe that life is like a school – where you learn the lessons exactly like you’re supposed to and get judged at the end to see how well you did – or that life is like a game – we’re competing against one another to see who can get the most power and material wealth.  These worldviews drive these peoples life choices.  Both viewpoints contain the commonality that every person is separate and apart from every other person and that that belief drives many of the problems of the modern world.

If we saw everything as interconnected and interdependent – everything that appears to be separate is known to be part of a whole – and we truly lived our lives from that viewpoint, then there would be little place in this world for war, poverty and suffering.  There is no “other” – there is only this one of which I have my experience of uniqueness and individuality.

So what we need is a new metaphor – a new shortcut for looking at life that supports a worldview of oneness and interconnectedness.  We need to replace the bowl of cherries, the box of chocolate, the school and the game with a new catchphrase.

What’s it going to be for you?  One common metaphor for our “multiplicity within the unity” – that is, our uniqueness within the oneness – is of the ocean.  We often hear the description that we are like drops of water or waves within the ocean.  The essence that is the ocean is embedded in us but we are not the entire ocean.  As that drop of water or that wave, we express ourselves in our own unique way while still remaining connected to the whole.  I’ve always liked this metaphor.

Here’s a strange one that came to me recently – consciousness, spirit, mind, the one – whatever name you wish to give to that underlying essence – is like a stretchy rubber blanket of which we are all a part.  (Yes, I know, there’s a joke somewhere here about bedwetting or insane asylums.  You can play with that analogy if you want.)  The point is – we are connected to everything as a part of that stretchy fabric but that at certain points we all push up through it and take on a form that appears different from it.  We look out and see others who have pushed up and out and taken on their own shape and appear to be separate from us.  We are all part of the rubber blanket, but all we see and experience are the shapes that each of us have taken on in our unique expression of that underlying oneness.  We’ve become so wrapped up in the fabric of the experience of life, that we have forgotten the fabric that binds us.

Play with that visual for a few minutes – imagine every person and object as poking up through a rubber blanket so far that there are all these shapes and forms moving about with a sense of being separate.  When we transition from this life, we released our shape and return back level with the blanket.  Can you picture it?  This visual helps me grasp the concept that “consciousness is the ground of all being” a point frequently made by quantum physicist Amit Goswami and others.  That is, consciousness is embedded in everything.

How does this metaphor works for you?  Do you have one you use not mentioned here that you have found useful for reminding yourself of our underlying unity?  If so, post a comment or send me an e-mail – I would love to hear what you use to remember our oneness.

Peace and blessings.

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Conscious Bridge Website, Featured Article, Spirituality

What’s Your Metaphor?

March 28, 2011 //
0

There are two kinds of people – those who divide people into two groups and those who don’t.  Ah, but are there really?  We’ll return to that.

But first let’s look at metaphors –a metaphor is a way to attempt to understand something that you don’t currently comprehend by way of seeing it like something you do understand.  It’s taking two things which we know are very different but emphasizing some similarity between the two to gain insight.

Here’s a couple of examples courtesy of Stephen Colbert – speaking at a commencement address in 2006 – “Today is about you–you who have worked so hard to pack your heads with learning until your skulls are all plump like–sausages of knowledge. It’s an apt metaphor, don’t question it.”  – Or another – “An accountant is a manila envelope yellowed with age that fell between the filing cabinet and the wall. Trapped, alone, parched.”

Obviously, those students’ skulls were not sausages nor are accountants manila envelopes, but playing with the metaphor can often offer us a new way of looking at something.  My experience of college certainly seems like a lot of disjointed information was being crammed into my brain in some kind of mashing operation.  Accountants can seem like the organized holders of our financial records while the rest of our life is filled with chaotic playfulness. If we continued playing with these humorous metaphors, we might get some deeper insights…..but we at least get to see college and accountants in a slightly different light!

So where is there something that we have a difficult time wrapping our mind around that maybe a metaphor might help us understand it?  How about the meaning of existance?  That has to be one of the deepest questions that just doesn’t offer us a straightforward approach for answering.  Have we somehow quietly adopted a metaphor for understanding life that is driving our worldview?   I think many of us have.

So what’s your metaphor for life, for consciousness, for why you’re here?  What do you take from your experience that you believe you understand well and try to relate it to the mystery of existence so as to know it better?  It seems to me that many of us either view life as like a “school” or like a “game”.  Go with me on this for a moment…

 Those who believe life is like a school think that we got plopped here on earth to learn lessons.  We are each in our individual desks (our bodies, our minds, our souls), the truth is being spoon fed to us, there is only one right answer or truth and we better learn it because we’re going to be tested on it.  Each of us has our individual soul that we came here with it if we can learn the truth as it is presented to us, then on our judgment/graduation day we can move on to a better place.

Those who believe life is like a game think that we came here to compete with each other.  We are the highest levels of evolving animals seeking to survive in a harsh world.  To succeed, we need to accumulate wealth and power.  Consciousness is just a byproduct of a physically evolved brain.  Any deeper meaning sought by using religion or God is just an irrational belief in the mind of the weaker individual.  The one who dies with the most toys is the winner.

We probably all know a lot of people that we could put into either of these two categories.  These two groups really have more in common than either would be willing to admit.  At the core of both is the belief that each of us is separate and apart from one another.  One says that each of us is here to live that life of separation so we can learn “the way”, be judged, and then move on to an eternal life of heaven or hell.  The other says each of us is here to live that life of separation so we can compete against one another and hopefully come out a winner.  Either way – we’re on our own.

The problem with both of these metaphors is that as long as we see ourselves as separate from the whole, we all too often end up caring only about ourselves or our group – disregarding the needs of the whole.  We tend to favor those who think like us, belong to the same political party, live in the same country, have the same skin color, belong to the same religion, have the same sexual orientation, etc.  As long as we are separate, it’s all too easy for us to judge others negatively, to be accepting of poverty and violence towards them, to turn our backs on their misfortune – after all, they are “different”.  So maybe these two kinds of people are really the same kind?  They’re both stuck in the metaphor of separation. 

As we look out upon the problems facing our planet – how many of them are caused or exacerbated by our belief that we are separate?  If we saw ourselves as interconnected and all one people, would we have war?  Would we have selfish corporations maximizing profits while destroying the planet?  Would we put the wealth of the planet in the hands of a small minority?  Would greedy Wall Street banks have provided unstable loans, sold derivatives and set in place a chain of events leading to a recession?  Would we entertain ourselves by watching violence towards humans?  If we knew all our unity, then none of this would occur.

Maybe what we need is a new metaphor – one that removes the separation?

Next time – a new metaphor!

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Categories Featured Article, Politics

Get Over It!

March 18, 2011 //
0

What are you here to do? I mean why are you here on the planet? Why were you born?

Are you here just to go through the story of your life? Just a random chance event you showed up here with all of us?

Is there some feeling within you that knows you were here to do more? What is your purpose and calling in life? Are you living it?

If so, are you living it fully? Are you doing everything you can to fulfill your life’s purpose? If not, why not?

If you’re not living fully on purpose, then why is that? Are you afraid? Is your fear keeping you from living “flat out”?

What are your afraid of? Are you afraid of failure? Are you afraid of success? Are you afraid of being judged by others? Are you afraid of being judged by yourself?

Get over it! Whatever is holding you back – release it! Move on!

Live your life fully on purpose. Do what you came here to do.

Blessings.

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Featured Article, Spirituality

Celebrity Obsession

March 15, 2011 //
2

Why is America obsessing over Charlie Sheen?  Seems like everywhere I look there’s some news about the latest rants from Charlie.  I even caught myself spending time watching him being interviewed the other night when I was channel surfing.  Why?

We all know America loves its celebrities.  Our media and by extension each of us seems fascinated by the rise to fame.  A person that we could care less about one day gets thrust into the spotlight, and all of a sudden we want to know every detail about their lives.

 The only thing we love better than our celebrities is watching them fall.  It’s like we collectively lift them up onto a pedestal and then silently wait for them to fall off of it.  Then like a pack of vultures we gather around to pick up the carcass of their fame with our own mixed feelings ranging from sadness and disappointment to some sort of secret sense of glee that they got what they deserved.  It’s like slowing down driving by a car wreck – we really hope no one’s hurt while we gaze at the wreckage with morbid curiosity.

Personally, my heart goes out to Charlie.  I don’t know him and I don’t know what he’s gone through – I only know what I project upon him based upon what the media presents.  My projection shows me a person who has struggled with the trappings of fame.  Born into a famous family, he’s lived under the media microscope all his life.  Movies and television have allowed him to accumulate a lot of money.

All too often we witness people in these circumstances succumbing to temptations that arise around them.  Celebrity forays into drugs and sex are a moneymaker for the media.  We have been inundated with the details of Charlie’s escapades.  Now we’re being saturated with every word Charlie speaks.  Why is this?  Aren’t there more important things going on in the world?

The other night I had a series of strange dreams – I was showing up at stores that were closing and being turned away.  I was going places and forgetting why I was there.  I was reminded that I was supposed to give a talk and I hadn’t prepared for it.  It was one frustration after another – and then I heard the word “surrender”.  Suddenly the dreams made sense – my ego wants to control everything “out there” in life, but that sense of control is really an illusion.  When he gets down to it, you really can’t “control” anything.

Yes, you can set intentions and take actions towards manifesting those intentions.  I highly recommend doing this.  It’s good to have an internal sense of where your life’s calling is and then to be moving in that direction.  But it’s also good to live life with a degree of flexibility that allows you to bob and weave with grace and ease around the speed bumps that come up in life.

Trying to force your way through obstacles is a recipe for frustration.  Surrendering is not giving up your goals and intentions.  Surrendering is really knowing deeply your overall direction but releasing control over the exact route and details of the path.  Surrendering is letting go of trying to force a specific outcome and instead enjoying the ride knowing your intention will carry you where you need to go.  I believe my dreams were reminding me of this truth.

So back to Charlie and our celebrity obsession – what’s the connection?  Well, this could be my projection and I’m just taking you along for the ride, but it seems to me that our celebrity obsessions generally hold a lesson for all of us.  Something inside us forces us to look at a situation for our own growth.

We are here in this material physical world to enjoy it and to learn lessons for our own growth. Yet this world sets up traps for us. We can become so attached to money, fame, relationships, what we perceive as the “good life” and so on that it consumes us. Instead of moving through life with effortless ease  and flowing with its gifts and lessons, we try to force things – try to control outcomes – continuously focusing our consciousness on what “we need” and what “we want”.

When we focus on what we need and what we want what we tend to get is “more of the need”. You can’t get what you want while you’re focused on “what you want”. I know that sounds like a paradox. But the more we focus on what “we have”, the more we tend to receive of it. Feeling appreciation and gratitude for what we have grows more of that in our lives.

Yet there is this human part of us that “wants” for even more. And that part of us that is focused on the “want” looks to celebrities with fame and fortune as models for us to learn from. How did they get their fame and fortune? And, how are they dealing with it?

We love to see other people get successful. We love it when they handle it well. However, we are fascinated when they don’t. The question is how to turn our fascination into an opportunity to learn in these situations.

So what can we learn from Charlie? We can see that fame and fortune doesn’t always bring happiness. We can realize that the trappings of celebrity and money can also bring the problems of drugs and emotional issues.  And we can realize realize that maybe we don’t need the lifestyle of the rich and famous to truly enjoy our lives.  We can look at the lives we currently have and realize they are already blessed. We can let go of out need to control life “out there” and instead focus on our life’s intentions with a relaxed nature.  We can “surrender” and enjoy the ride.

 Mark Gilbert

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Categories Culture, Entertainment, Featured Article

Japan-Our Hearts are with you!

March 13, 2011 //
1

Our thoughts and prayers go out this day to all those impacted by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I also want to say thanks to  everyone who has contacted us to inquire about the safety of Mary’s relatives. Mary and I had dinner last night with her mother who has been in contact with their relatives and luckily all are well.

A year ago I wrote about how the earthquake in Haiti served to open our hearts and bring us closer together as humans. As much as tragedies such as this one in Japan, Haiti, New Orleans and Katrina, last month in New Zealand and others sadden us, we can also take heart in how humanity reaches out and senses its connection to its brethren around the planet in their  moment of need.

As much as the world seems to focus on its differences and works to foster its continued divisiveness,  tragedies buck this trend and move us closer together. Our differences become less important. Our similarities become foremost in our minds. Our hearts open to others who are suffering needlessly. We are pained by their pain.

So on this day, let us in our minds eye reach out and send love to those in Japan and all around the earth who are suffering. May we know that the devastation in Japan is repaired swiftly and their lives are brought back to peace and prosperity quickly. May we sense this day our interconnectedness to everyone on the planet. May we move  a little closer to living continuously in the state of knowing that we are all one.

May we live this day and every day immersed in the energetic field of love.

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Consciousness, Culture, Featured Article, Uniting Nations

We Are Already All One

February 23, 2011 //
0

Next week I’ll be in San Diego participating as two organizations who teach “oneness” decide whether to become one. Over 50 years ago, the one group that taught Ernest Holmes’ Science of Mind philosophy divided into two groups. Operating for many years as the United Church of Religious Science and Religious Science International, they created their separate operational processes and developed their own cultures all while teaching the same beliefs.

In today’s article, we sprint through humanity’s evolutionary path in honor of these two groups (now known as the United Centers for Spiritual Living and the International Centers for Spiritual Living) for taking this important step. They are evolving to their next logical step, just as you and I are.

To begin this jaunt, let’s consider that there are two ways by which we humans come to experience life – peering inward and looking outward. Gazing externally has allowed us to develop the wonderful gift of science, a tool which allows us to make sense of the external world.

Science has looked back into the past and offered us conclusions about how we got where we are now. Although they cannot tell us why or how everything started, most scientists believe that at the beginning of the universe all matter was compressed into one very tiny spot. The familiar “big bang” exploded outward disbursing everything that had been one into the vast recesses of space.  From that moment that all substance moved apart, science suggests that all the physical laws that we have discovered that act upon this matter existed as well.

As matter expanded from its initial state of oneness, the laws of gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism began guiding it into clumps which eventually became stars and planets. Planets with the right conditions saw the elements combine in a form of self cooperation to produce simple organisms.  Science says something called “life” emerged and it grew more and more complex as it followed processes that later we described as evolution and survival of the fittest.

Eventually evolution led to something called consciousness emerging within these more complex beings and ultimately one of them became so complex that it crossed a threshold into becoming conscious of its own consciousness –humanity was born. As humanity’s evolution continued, so did its development of both its ways of experiencing and understanding life – that is, peering inward and looking outward.

The outward empirical gaze of science has served us well, bringing increases in our standard of living, technological advances and greater understanding of our universe.  Yet this outward gaze also tends to reinforce a perception that we are separate and apart from one another. It calls our attention to our differences. It fosters our sense of competition.  And, it contributes to our dividing ourselves up by our dissimilarities, be they our different races, cultures, countries, religious or political beliefs – and sometimes even our different organizations who teach oneness.

But just as we can peer outward and gain understanding on our evolutionary path, we can also peer inward and gain equally valid insights. Mystics and sages have been looking inside via meditation and reflection for years and reporting back their discoveries – we are already one. They remind us, as does science, that we were born from oneness. At the depths of that inner awareness, they sense that in spite of outward appearances to the contrary, we are still one. They state with conviction that as we continue to evolve we will return to truly living from that oneness.

Interestingly, in our past knowledge was knowledge – we valued both inner and outer wisdom without distinction of its source.  Hundreds of years ago a great “split” put the physical world under the domain of science and left the world of the nonphysical – God, consciousness and so on – to be the concerns of religion/spirituality and philosophy.  Along the way, each developed their own processes and cultures.

In recent years, there has been a move to reunify our inner and outer ways of understanding the universe – an integration of science and spirituality.  This was certainly one aspect of Ernest Holmes’ work in the creation of the Science of Mind early in the 20th century.  Individuals such as Sri Aurobindo, Ken Wilber and others have made contributions to this aim in creating “integral” philosophies.

The melding of the outer and the inner approaches to understanding have offered some interesting insights.  For example, many now realize that observed evolution of physical life growing into more complex forms is mirrored by a similar evolution going on inside everything.  Many philosophers suggest (and mystics concur) consciousness is embedded in everything.  As physical life evolved in complexity so did the consciousness embedded within it.

Here’s how Ernest Holmes put it – ” Through eons of time life has been slowly climbing up the ladder of unfoldment to the present self-conscious state achieved in man.   Some degree of consciousness exists in everything because everything is some form of Spirit, and Spirit is Intelligence.  However, there are degrees of intelligence, or consciousness.  We often hear the expression, “Consciousness sleeps in mineral life, dreams in plant life, awakens in animal life, and comes to self-consciousness in man.”  Man, then, stands at the very peak of the evolutionary climb.  He is now a self-conscious individual which means that he not only knows, but knows that he knows.  He can think about his own consciousness, and he now has the power of choice – the very summit of life’s upward striving.  Evolution, through infinite ages, has done much for him.”

So in essence, our journey has always been one that follows the same path.  That path begins in unity, it wanders into the experience of separation, and when that sense of separation has served its purpose, it returns home to the unity from which it began.

Millions of years ago, Spirit-God-Consciousness began in oneness and cast itself out, splitting itself up and embedding itself into all of its creation and allowing itself the experience of separation.  Yet the forces that would lead us out of the wilderness of separation were embedded within us from the beginning – evolution.  Evolution has allowed both the outer expression and the inner consciousness to simultaneously grow– along the way experiencing greater complexity, greater levels of self cooperation, greater degrees of conscious awareness, greater involvement in directing the evolutionary process.  There appears to be a direction to the progression.  Where is it going?  As Holmes put it, “Evolution is the awakening of the soul to a recognition of its unity with the Whole.”  In other words, we are remembering that we are already one.

Hundreds of years ago, our ways of knowing began in oneness but humanity split them into science and spirituality.  We have allowed ourselves to believe that there are two separate ways of knowing – the outer and the inner.  The material successes of science has on the one hand contributed much to the quality of our life while on the other leading us to turn against ourselves in conflict as we believe ourselves separate.  Something within us says it is time to move beyond this duality.  The evolution of our understanding is reuniting in an integral viewpoint where we realize that everything is connected.  In other words, we are remembering that it’s already one.

Tens of years ago, the philosophy of Science of Mind began in oneness but our humanness allowed it to split into two organizations.  We have allowed ourselves to experience separation via different rules, different structures, different cultures – forging different relationships with different people.  Evolution has now brought us to the point where we realize that separation has served its purpose and now returns us home to the unity from where we began.  In other words, we are remembering that we are already one.

Some years ago, your essence born of the oneness came into physical form at the moment of your birth.  Your senses have allowed you to experience separation from everything that appears “out there” in the earth.  You have believed that you are different from others, that you are in competition with humanity, that competition and conflict are appropriate in this world of duality.  But forces and urges within you question this sense of division, pushing you to grow beyond it.  Evolution and love call you to a sense of connection with others – to truly know your unity.  In other words to remember that you are already one.

Blessings

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Featured Article, Spirituality

Being Pushed and Pulled to Grow

February 19, 2011 //
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Today: Bill Maher, Civil War reenactments, Winter’s Bone, cognitive dissonance and the forces creating your personal evolution. Are you ready?

Consider this – to some degree, opposing forces are always moving through our consciousness creating a tension that ensures we move forward in our personal development. I’m reminded of the quote by F Scott Fitzgerald – “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” All of us have access to a first-rate intelligence.

Cognitive Dissonance

In psychology, the uncomfortable experience of holding two conflicting opinions or thoughts is referred to as cognitive dissonance. Psychologists have done extensive research and come up with numerous theories about how we seek to deal with this discomfort. No matter what the theory, ultimately how we respond to the uncomfortable feeling can lead to either a healthy positive outcome (such as letting go of an old belief that we now see is no longer true) or an unhealthy negative one (such as denying the validity of one of the conflicting ideas).

Think of the tension created in some Christians minds between biblical passages seeming to condemn homosexuality and their loving positive experience of friends and family members who are gay and desire to marry. Most have dealt with this dichotomy by letting go of the idea that every word put in the Bible over 2000 years ago must have relevance today. Others who cannot accept that fact go to great lengths to deny gays their rights as humans.

But sometimes our growth comes not from resolving the differences to relieve the discomfort but rather staying with the tension so we may move to a new place in our awareness where both ideas can exist and be valid simultaneously. Here lies the space for great leaps in our development. Two different programs I watched on TV last night reminded me of this fact.

Bill Maher and the Civil War

I love watching Bill Maher’s TV show. He’s funny, smart and generally makes me think. I frequently agree with his opinions – but not always. Sometimes I imagine telling him where and why he’s wrong on an issue – my desire to enlighten him, I believe, is motivated by a sense that he “should know better” given his other beliefs. There are some TV show hosts that I judge to be so far off the mark in their values that I can’t even imagine trying to get them to see things “my way”. Yeah, I know, that’s my issue!

In any case, last night Bill Maher closed his program with a rant on Civil War reenactments by Southerners. His funny point – we all know that the Confederacy was fighting to uphold slavery and they lost – why would you want to celebrate the memory of fighting for a negative cause on which you didn’t even succeed? He equated it humorously at one point to reenacting an unsuccessful sexual experience – why go celebrate something you’d rather forget? Funny stuff.

Of course, Bill only sees one side of this issue – slavery is wrong and it deserved to be defeated. No argument on that. What Bill can’t see because he didn’t grow up in the South is how these people may be using Civil War reenactments for something other than celebrating a losing war fought for an inhumane purpose.

I grew up in the South and had to face in my feelings the dissonance created by two opposing forces. I experienced firsthand in my white youth the impact of segregation – separate restrooms, separate water fountains, separate seating areas, separate movie theaters, separate areas of town in which to live. Something in me knew this was wrong and questioned it every chance I got. People should be treated equally and have the same rights and opportunities. Beyond this, the slavery I read about in history books was definitely a bad thing! The Confederacy losing was definitely a good thing!

Yet on the other hand, there was this internal sense of identity with my neighborhood, my town, my county, my state. And, as an extension of that, an identification with “the land I grew up in” being a part of the Confederacy. I never could really put my finger on that feeling until as an adult I viewed Ken Burns PBS series “The Civil War”. At one point in the show a historian comments that one outcome for the South after the war was that those growing up there would always feel the sense of coming from a country that lost a war. Hearing that statement, I knew exactly what he meant. I’ve spoken with others who grew up in the South and had the same feeling.

So here’s the tension – all people should be valued and treated equally, slavery as well as discrimination based on race is simply wrong, it was a good thing that the South lost the Civil War – yet, because the South lost the Civil War, if you grew up there then you may have a sense of identifying the country of your youth (at least in part) as being one that lost a war and having another country impose itself upon you. Believe me – I recognize that unless you grew up in the South and experienced this feeling, it may be hard to understand.

To be extremely clear – I am not one that overly romanticizes the Confederacy or believes they should have won– the right outcome occurred. Slavery, then and now, is purely wrong. Nor am I saying that every person who may reenact aspects of the Civil War or memorializes things about the Confederacy may not be misguided in their intentions. I have no doubt that some who espouse continued southern sympathies may have racist underpinnings. Yet I can also understand why many Southerners can condemn racism in one moment while remembering and honoring the Confederacy in the next. On a certain level, these aren’t opposites.

The point I’m attempting to show is that one can hold what seem to be opposing viewpoints – and the holding of those viewpoints may serve you see things from a higher level. It’s okay to know that slavery is wrong and to be pleased that the Confederacy lost the Civil War while also feeling an identification with the South and it being a “country who lost a war”. I can honor my relatives who fought for an unworthy cause and be glad they lost.

By my holding these apparently conflicting feelings, I now get to grow above them to a greater awareness – one that allows me to both rightfully condemn slavery around the world and have a better understanding for individuals in other countries who have felt defeat. Holding both feelings has opened my heart to higher levels. I can identify and empathize with more people – expanding my circle of care and concern-evolving my awareness.

Winter’s Bone

The other program I saw last night was the movie “Winter’s Bone”. This was for the most part a depressing film about a 17-year-old girl named Ree in rural Arkansas raising her two younger siblings while also taking care of her emotionally incapacitated mother. She relies on the goodness of neighbors and relatives for food and money to get by. Ree pushes her brother and sister to do well in school recognizing that it’s key to moving beyond their life’s confines. All she has to fall back on is her house and land which are being threatened unless her missing father shows up for his court date – he used the property for his bail.

The movie follows Ree’s attempt to locate her father, dead or alive, so as to keep her house and family together. You can see something pushing her from within to outgrow this limited backwoods existence – maybe if she could join the Army, get an income and see the world? You can also see her family pulling her to stay and help take care of everyone.

As she navigates around this rural world where everyone appears to be a relative, close or distant, you see her rising up and wanting something more out of life then we can sense in those around her. Again, I understood personally her dilemma. My upbringing as a youth in the South certainly was more affluent than Ree and her relatives, but the movie did bring back memories of visits to rural relatives who had a similar subsistence lifestyle. I felt a push to move beyond the limits of my southern youth while wondering how some friends and family seemed content with a life that to me appeared constricting.

Why is it that some people such as Ree and myself desire growth and expansion beyond the lifestyle of our youth while others appear content? Sometimes it appears that certain people seek vertical growth while others desire to experience life horizontally – that is, fully immersing themselves in their current positions in life and not pushing to grow beyond them.

Our Evolution

I used to believe that there were exactly these two kinds of people when it came to personal growth – the vertical growth oriented and the horizontal “assimilators”. That’s not to say that everybody at some point in their life doesn’t experience both vertical upward movement or horizontal assimilation of life’s lessons. My thought was that each of us tended to favor one direction or the other – people were different and my choice for expansive upward growth was obviously better.

Yet now I see that there is a perfection in the fact that some people seek upward momentum while others prefer treading life’s water. It’s not an “either-or” situation – it’s an “and”. If everyone were either moving vertically or horizontally, there would be no contrast by which to gauge growth. The perception of Ree and myself of those who appear stuck in their limiting lives provide a backdrop for us to view and say to ourselves “I want better”. My growth is served by those who take a different approach. Similarly, I have heard from some people who can’t seem to comprehend the push for greater personal development and a life of broader experiences – seeing those lives motivates them to anchor into one place. Again, one approach serves the other.

There are forces playing out in your life and mine serving our growth. One of those factors that moves us to higher levels of awareness is the ability to see how opposing ideas and ways of being can both be seen as valid.

Where in your life are you experiencing contrasting ideas or desires that need to be assimilated into a combined worldview? Where are you feeling dissonance?

Are you unhappy at your job but believe you can’t afford to change careers?

Do you love your significant partner while feeling stifled in the relationship?

Are you called to make a major change (where you live, your religion, letting go of long-held possessions, etc.) while feeling bound by tradition?

Do you believe you’re a positive person while still feeling concern about events on the planet?

Where is your healthy tension in life?

Maybe you can identify it immediately – maybe you’ll have to reflect upon it and be observant over the next week – but what I’m asking you to locate is that aspect of your experience where you are called to realize where two things that at first blush appear to be incompatible are really not – both are valid, both are true, both can coexist. When you identify the opposites, I encourage you to let go of any emotional attachment you have to one side or the other. Then ask yourself – “how does honoring both viewpoints serve my growth?” When you can resonate and live with the answer to that question, not only are you exhibiting a “first-rate intelligence”, you are evolving on your journey.

Finally, this leads us to the ultimate opposing tensions playing out on our evolutionary journey – we are simultaneously physically evolving human beings with worldly needs and spiritually evolving divine beings with higher callings. Living with and understanding that tension is answering that higher call. Ultimately, the push of our humanness and the pull of our spiritual nature unites us in our oneness- the ultimate destination of our growth

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Culture, Entertainment, Featured Article

The World As Your Valentine!

February 12, 2011 //
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Today, the topic is love.  Given our title, you probably know where I’m going – all we need is love, what the world needs now is love sweet love, can’t we all just love one another – that kind of thing – and ultimately you’re right but I would, uh, “love it” if you would play along!

Valentine’s Day Is Here!

But do you ever stop to wonder where it came from?  Here are some basic facts from Wikipedia – the day was created and named after an early Christian martyr named Saint Valentine around 500 CE.  There are questions as to whether this name represents one person or many martyrs.  One of these martyrs named Valentine died on February 14, hence our celebration on this date. 

Ironically, the early honoring of Valentine had nothing to do with romantic love – the earliest records of linking love to Valentine’s Day is found in the writings Chaucer in the late 1300s.  Some historians believe the link derived from ancient Roman fertility celebrations that went on around the same time.  Over the centuries, many people were called to strengthen this connection between love and holiday – and in the 19th century, the tradition of writing notes to one another grew into the 20th and 21st century big business of the greeting card companies!

What were your earliest memories of Valentine’s Day?  For me, I can still see my elementary school room where we had taped up decorated bags with our names on them to the chalk trays under the room’s blackboards.  The night before at home I had prepared all my Valentine cards to be delivered to my classmates.  This was a big deal to me.  At my mother’s urging, I prepared a card for everyone in my class.  The choicest cards from the box my mother had bought me were selected for the prettiest girls.  The absolute best card generally went to the girl that I had a secret crush on!  This was my one time of the year that I could safely profess my love, even if in a very subtle way.

At the chosen moment, our teacher would have us go around and deliver our Valentines into the other kid’s bags.  Later we retrieved our little mailboxes, retreated to our desk and opened our love notes.  I carefully read the cards from the pretty girls, especially “that one girl”, to decipher any clues that my affection was returned.  I carefully noted who in the class had not given me a card.  My worth, my lovable-ness, all being determined by the count cards and the subtle messages they contained.  Oh how these early messages became ingrained in us and gave us fodder for healing later!

As I grew up, Valentine’s Day got locked into a day to get gifts for my one girlfriend and eventually my wife.  Cards, flowers, candy and meals out were all purchased with the intention to say “I love you”.  At least, we hope that that intention is there!  I’ve talked to a lot of men where it sounded that their actions were more out of obligation than an intention of expressing love.  I have no doubt I probably slipped into this trap somewhere earlier in life, too.

What Is Love?

What exactly is this thing love which we claim to be professing?  So much has been said, written and sung about this topic – it has captivated us as long as there has been an “us”.  But I’m going to keep it simple here.

Most of us equate love with a human emotion somehow linked to desire for some person, thing or experience.  Most of us recognize there are different “levels” to our love.  I may love hot Apple pie, walking around Paris or a good movie.  Yet somehow that love is different than the love I feel for my dog, Harmony; my wife, Mary; my grown children – Melanie, Julie, Matthew, Glen, and Christian; or my grandchildren – Amelie, Cayla and Zoe.

I thought at the time that I loved that pretty little girl in my elementary school class.  I remember my first serious girlfriend and that intense out of control sense of love.  Along the path of life, I have felt “love” for many people.  That feeling has tended to mature a bit along the way.  The “life or death” intensity of “I love you, please love me or I am heartbroken” has shifted into a deeper care and concern over your happiness and the quality of your life.  I may still “want you to love” me, but I’m not going to die if you don’t and I can still care about you.  Bottom line is our sense of the experience of love shifts for most of us as we walk life’s path—it “evolves”.

Every once in a while, I bump into these people who exude a warmth and love that seems to extend from them out to everyone.  When I encounter these people, I want to be around them!  In fact, something in me wants to feel and exude the love that they do.  Something calls me to expand my feeling of love to more and more people.  Their experience of love seems to be the next step in how the maturing of my experience of it is moving.  Somehow love itself is calling me to love everyone.

Expanding Our Circle

I’ve written about this before – the natural progression of expanding our circle of care and concern to a broader number of people – moving from being egocentric (caring only about myself) to ethnocentric (caring about a widening circle of people who are like me – family, friends, share the same religion, share the same ethnicity, share the same country) to world centric (caring about everyone everywhere).  This is our evolutionary path ultimately.  We can deny it.  We can fight it.  We can avoid claiming it in this lifetime.  Yet I’m convinced this is where humanity is ultimately headed.

I’m not alone in that belief.  Many mystics and individuals who have combined spirituality and evolution have seen that truth including Ernest Holmes, Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  This path is also frequently referenced by philosopher Ken Wilber and integral theory.

One of my favorite quotes by de Chardin is “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.”  If you’ve read Conscious Bridge for very long, you have probably heard me reference this quote before.

Upon first reading it, we may think that he is saying that if we could somehow hook electrodes up to humans and capture this power source called love, then we could somehow break our dependence on foreign oil and bring down our CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.  But that’s not exactly what he means.

In my opinion, de Chardin is reaching back into our past when humanity crossed a critical threshold in its evolution.  When we discovered fire is also when we discovered our ability to think and reason – we recognized that we were thinking – and with that ability came the power to manipulate the physical world.  We’ve been getting better at that ever sense as we “master the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity”.  Now we’re ready to kick it up a notch.

By turning inward, and harnessing this emotion that we call love, de Chardin is pointing us towards our next great leap in our collective evolution.  If somehow we can consciously direct our love rather than see it as an emotion which controls us, then we are “harnessing it”.  And, de Chardin reminds us we are harnessing this power “for God”– but please keep in mind that the God he describes is not the old myth of a bearded man sitting on a throne in the sky which is still fairly prevalent in our consciousness, but rather a God that is an energy, a power, a vast intelligence –”God” is in everything and everything is a part of “God”.

As we consciously choose to direct our love more and more, we let go of our sense of separation from one another and begin experiencing our unity, our oneness – in other words by our “harnessing our love” we expand our awareness of the fact that we are all part of “God”.  The more we can grow in that consciousness, the more we will be like those loving people I keep bumping into – if I can see beyond the veil of your story of your humanness from your time here on planet Earth and into your truth that you are this spiritual consciousness evolving in the same flowing ocean that I am, then how can I not love you!  In spite of outward appearances and our different earthly stories, we are the same!

Harnessing the Evolutionary Force of Love

Ultimately love at its highest level is not this emotion we feel, but an evolutionary force driving us to our highest potential.  De Chardin said, “Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them… for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.”

Ernest Holmes said that love “is the great transforming Power, which brings everything into harmony.  It is the unifying Principle, the creative element, the motivating Power of all that is fine and noble in life.”  Aurobindo wrote, ” Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment.  It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.”  In were we not taught as kids that “God is love”?

So somehow each of us is called to journey in our awareness from an early learned sense of love being an emotion that simply arises inside us that is outside our personal control – to a new sense of love being a power that we can harness as we evolve, a power returns us into unity with spirit or God.  So how do we make that shift?  Here are some simple, but not necessarily easy steps:

  • Recognize that giving love is not dependent on receiving love.  I can still choose to love the little girl in my elementary class whether she gives me a card or not.  I can choose to love you no matter who you are and what you believe.  I don’t have to condone your behavior nor allow you to walk all over me, I can have healthy boundaries and disagree with your actions but still love you.
  • Recognize that I can always create an intention to love, it’s within my conscious choice.  Why are you and I giving those Valentine’s Day gifts?  The energy behind an intention of obligation tends to foster separation, an intention to express love moves us into unity.
  • Recognize that not only can I expand my circle of love to include more and more people – something inside me pushes me in that direction.  Most people regardless of their political or religious beliefs feel something in their hearts open towards people much different from themselves at certain moments.  Consider the Indian Ocean tsunami of a few years ago, the Haitian earthquake last year or the shooting in Arizona last month.  Much of the world’s attention has been focused on the events in Egypt these past couple of weeks.  Something inside of us connected the passion and excitement of Egyptians as they took steps to create a government that is responsive to their needs.  Our hearts opened as we watched their happiness unfold and celebrations erupt on the streets.  Forget politics for a moment – focus on that feeling within you that connected you with the Egyptians excitement.  That feeling can be controlled and expanded.  It is an evolutionary force connecting you with others!

So on this Valentine’s Day, make each of us be reminded to shift a little bit in our perception of love.  May we see the gift that this emotion has given us throughout our lives, how we may gain conscious control of this emotion and harness it for our personal growth, and how we may expand our love to encompass all – may we see the world as our Valentine.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Be Love!

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Conscious Bridge Website, Consciousness, Featured Article
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