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Metaphysical Maps

August 17, 2011 //
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Today—the metaphor of the map, how we seek their guidance and a very basic metaphysical map of the Science of Mind and Spirit.

I love maps.  When I’m in a new city, one of the first things I do is pull out a map and orient myself to the layout of my new locale.  Online mapping websites and the map app on my iPhone are my frequent friends.  I know I’m not alone in my desire to understand where I am, where I want to go and the best route to get there.

Seems like we humans have always had an innate desire to map our surroundings.  Where we now employ talking GPS’s in our cars, I can still remember back in the day pulling into the gas station to look at the big map they had on the wall or buying the local foldout map that never quite seemed to have the ability to fold back up in its original condition.  I still find it amazing that early settlers of the American west set out in covered wagons with only minimal maps to guide them.  Yet they did have some maps – the rough approximations sketched out by those who first traversed the wilderness.  And what about those early ocean explorers from the middle of the last millennium?  Is it any wonder that one of their main tasks was mapping what they saw Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Conscious Bridge Website, Featured Article, Positive Evolution, Spirituality

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

We Are Already All One

February 23, 2011 //
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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

Moving between Survival and Spirituality

January 29, 2011 //
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What do the following have in common?  – The state of the union address, the Arizona tragedy, evolution, Achilles tendinitis, Abraham Maslow, 2001: A Space Odyssey and spirituality… Maybe more than you might think!

I was rocking along this week feeling very productive, checking off things on my to do list, planning what I was going to do this weekend – you know, living life and getting things done.  Then, a couple of days ago, all of those plans got thrown out the window when a sharp pain appeared in my left heel.  I hobbled to the doctor who labeled it “Achilles tendinitis”.  I never really thought about this diagnosis before – but I’ve since been reading about it on Wikipedia and now know more than I ever cared to about the topic.  Here’s the bottom line – it hurts to walk and I have to stay off my feet a few days.

Life can sure be strange!  You’re moving through all of your high-minded plans one moment and then you are struggling to get off the couch the next moment.  I was supposed to assist in the program last night of a good friend’s ordination as a minister.  I wanted to be there to honor her on her spiritual path, and my comments were already prepared!  Alas, I had to bow out and sit home with ice on my leg and popping anti-inflammatory pain pills.  One minute I’m focused on spirituality – the next on personal safety and security.

Abraham Maslow sure had it right with his famous and elegant theory of our hierarchy of needs – he pointed out that it was only in meeting lower level needs such as physiological, safety and security, love and belongingness and self-esteem would we be free to focus on higher needs such as self-actualization and self transcendence.  It’s hard to focus on communing with God when your stomach is focused on communing with food.  If at any time your basic needs are unmet, then in a New York minute your intentions quickly slide down to fill them.

Of course, this all makes great sense from an evolutionary viewpoint.  If we don’t take care of our lower-level physical needs – air, water, food, shelter, health, and procreation – then we don’t continue living and don’t propagate the species.  It is only in meeting our base animal needs that allows us to focus on our higher spiritual needs.

Human beings seem to walk simultaneously in two worlds – on the one hand, we are physical, material animals who are controlled to a degree by our animalistic nature – and on the other hand, something within our conscious awareness walks a higher path, calling us to become all that we can be, to seek connection with others, to live by the Golden rule, and to understand the meaning of life.  Wayne Dyer likes to focus our attention on the higher path when he says “you are a spiritual being having a human experience”.  Sometimes in our humanness, we are focused on survival.  Other times in our divineness, we are focused on spirituality.  We straddle a strange fence.

This really is part of our evolutionary path.  In the distant past, life evolved in physical form on planet Earth – from single cell organisms to multi-celled organisms to plants to animals – and at some point, the animal that became us crossed a threshold – it moved from being an animal to being what we call a “human being”.  What was this threshold?  It was a shift in our consciousness.  Lower life had consciousness but not self-awareness.  Humans had consciousness as well as an awareness of that consciousness.  We began to straddle the fence between our animal nature and something higher.

I believe that our crossing this threshold in our consciousness is what was represented by the monolith in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”.  It wasn’t so much about the big black object shown in the film or where it came from, but more of what it stood for – that magical moment when our consciousness shifted.  The animal became the human, we became aware of something within us that was already there – consciousness.

The forces of physical evolution are still embedded within us.  We must still meet our basic animal needs.  But the self-awareness of our consciousness has also allowed new evolutionary forces to emerge and call us to action.  Something within us calls us higher, bringing the desires for love and companionship, knowledge and understanding, compassion, and a sense to connect with something beyond our human physical form.  It is this desire for self transcendence – call it connecting with God, spirit or sensing oneness – which motivates us to a higher realm.  In a sense, we’re being called to leave behind the straddling of the fence where one foot is planted in our animal nature and the other in our spiritual one.  It’s my belief that this next threshold of moving from human to divine is what was represented by the second monolith at the conclusion of 2001.  Our consciousness shifts from self-awareness to divine awareness.

As we straddle this fence between our animal nature and our divine nature, we shift back and forth between our desire for survival and our desire to live in spiritual oneness.  Evolution rewarded those animals whose adaptations allowed them to quickly perceive quick changes and movements in our environment.  Those who could quickly detect a changing condition were rewarded by either catching their prey or not being caught and eaten.  We have hardwired within our DNA an evolutionary security system which is set off whenever there is a sharp change in the environment.  Slight gradient differences are less important than big changes when our safety is at stake.  That’s why you can supposedly drop a frog in boiling water and it will hop out but it will allow itself to boil to death if you slowly turn up the heat.  Survival benefits from seeing conditions as one way or the other.

As we answer our spiritual calling, one of the realizations we obtain is that everything is connected.  The black and white we only saw before now becomes various shades of gray.  The desire to categorize everything into two categories starts to dissipate as what were previous distinctions now blur into flowing patterns of interconnectedness.  Either-or thinking gives way to seeing everything as “and”.

As we slide between our animal nature and our divine nature, we shift between how we perceive things.  Life becomes a battle between right and wrong, good and bad, life and death when we are in survival mode.  Life becomes a dance of alternate ways of being, variety in our personal expressions, sensing life and more life when we are in our spiritual mode.

Our foot planted in our material physical world tells us that the survival of the fittest needs to quickly distinguish between what will save us versus what will kill us.  Our base fears are called into play when our lives feel challenged.  The 21st century world is moving fast.  It can be a scary place out there.  Terrorism and the recession threaten our way of life.  In fear we call upon our evolutionary past and divide the world up – things that will save us versus things that will harm us.  Something within our animal nature calls us to act fast – it’s fight or flight time.

This animal fear feeds our politics and our media when they can only see two alternate viewpoints – one right, one wrong.  It stokes the flames of violence where we feel we must own guns, use violent metaphors in our language and when taken to extreme – actual violence as we witnessed in Arizona recently.  Yes, the young man who did the shootings had mental issues.  But our system of animal-based fear is what keeps us from placing any limits on emotionally disturbed individuals from purchasing automatic weapons designed purely to kill other humans. This fear says “no gun control is better than any gun control”.  There is no chance for other options when fear kicks in.

If we could shift more to our foot planted in the spiritual world, then we could see how all of life is part of a grand oneness – interconnected – a beautiful web of life where the barriers we see were all erected by our humanness out of the need for physical survival.  By allowing these barriers to fall away, we remove such distinctions as left versus right, Republican versus Democrat, science versus religion, one country versus another, and so on.  Instead of barriers, we see gradients and differentiations of the oneness – an infinite variety within the one.

It’s not easy being human – we are still linked to our animal past becoming locked and addicted to physical needs and mired in fear of threats real and perceived – while something within us draws us to the angels of our better nature, seeking a world that works for everyone, where love and peace are the norm, where we taste the divine within our consciousness.

Every chance to melt the barriers moves us to our higher calling.  This past week during President Obama’s State of the Union address, Republicans and Democrats sat together in a spirit of cooperation.  Our cynical fearful side says that such a gesture is purely showmanship and not real.  Our higher loving side hopes that it’s the first step in a movement in seeing our unity as Americans and humans first and foremost over our political differences.

I’m a realist in that I know we will continue to slide back and forth between our divisiveness and our sense of affiliation; a movement between survival and spirituality.  But I’m also an optimist – I know that in each one of us we are shifting a little bit more towards our spiritual nature.  Each day we move closer to that higher threshold and towards the day when we no longer straddle the fence, standing firmly with both feet in our spiritual consciousness.

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Featured Article, Spirituality

Moving from Knowledge to Wisdom at Christmas

December 23, 2010 //
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Today we look at how moving from knowledge to wisdom serves our positive evolution.  We also explore the Christmas story and how it points us in this direction.

What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom?  For me, knowledge is awareness.  It’s learning the facts.  I wasn’t born with a conscious awareness of mathematics or quantum physics but through the experiences of living life, I have come to have knowledge of them.

Wisdom, on the other hand, is something we gain over time as we apply knowledge.  If I sit on my knowledge of mathematics or quantum physics or whatever and never use it, then it just sits in my head and I never embody it.  As I begin to apply knowledge in my life, I get feedback on both its truth and that intangible something about how the knowledge is best applied.  Over time, the more I apply knowledge and invoke this feedback loop, the more I grow in wisdom.

Here’s a quick example – I often write here about how everything is one, all is interconnected.  I also write about our consciousness and how it is evolving, that evolution taking us to a place of realizing our oneness.  We can read about this evolutionary path from many spiritual teachers, but reading it only gives us knowledge.  It’s only when we apply this knowledge that we move to wisdom.

As I write these words, we are on the cusp of Christmas.  People are scurrying around making their last-minute preparations to celebrate the holiday.  For many there will be food shared, gifts exchanged and love expressed.  Why have we developed this tradition?

Christmas is, of course, the time we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  We all know the story of Joseph and Mary and their trek to Bethlehem.  We know that Mary was a virgin giving birth to a baby.  We know the Joseph and Mary couldn’t find room at the inn, so they sought refuge in a stable for the night when Jesus was born.  We know that at the moment of his birth a bright star appeared above him guiding three wise men to the manger bearing gifts.  These and many other “facts of the story”, we celebrate as having occurred on December 25.

For devout Christians, the celebration of Christmas is about paying homage to the moment “our Savior” first appeared on earth.  For historians and scientists, much has been written the question the validity of “the facts” of the story.  Anyone who wishes to look at “the facts” rationally, could easily see that the story of the birth of Jesus and our celebration on December 25 has both its roots in pagan stories prior to the life of Jesus and that the details were most likely co-opted by early Christians to bring the story of Jesus to a wider pagan audience.

 Yet my point here is not to get stuck on the debate as to whether the story behind Christmas is literally “true”.  What I want us to do is to move beyond this debate and transcend the story to consider how it’s creation and duration through time might offer us the greater meaning.  After all, why would humans craft such a story back in the days before Jesus and then attach that story to Jesus and continue to use this story to create a celebration for humanity for thousands of years?  A lot has been written in an attempt to answer that question, but here’s a short summary of my belief as to one reason why this story and our annual celebration has had such a lasting power for humanity. 

Throughout the universe, everything is embedded with spirit, with consciousness.  Through time and the evolutionary process, that consciousness has evolved to a level of self-awareness in humanity.   Every day planet Earth is gifted with the birth of a new expression of that spirit.  Every human being coming forth into this physical plane is embedded with the light of consciousness, that Christ consciousness.  Every time this occurs it’s another miracle.  Something in early man recognized it and celebrated it.  Something in us today is still called to this celebration.  This celebration is serving and guiding us in the next steps of our path.

As this birth of self aware Christ consciousness appeared in Jesus, a bright light appeared above him.  Throughout our evolution, even before the birth of Jesus, “light” represented the power and goodness of Spirit.  Many believe that the light shining above him marked Jesus’ special nature.  If that is truth for you and it serves you, that’s fine with me – I’m really not trying to change a belief that works for you.  But for me, the bright light of the star above Jesus is pointing to something more.  It is there to remind us that we are all embedded with this divinity, that the moment of birth of each of us is a moment when that light comes forth.  That is why the story has had such a lasting power from before the time of Jesus and continues to this day – it’s everyone’s story.

 But is this is true, then what are we going to do with that knowledge?  It’s only by applying knowledge that we move to wisdom.  The light above Jesus guided the three wise men to him bearing gifts.  Is it a coincidence that it was “light” – the power and goodness of Spirit – that served as an ancient form of MapQuest directing “the wise men” toward its newest expression?  Ah, but as we often say, “there are no coincidences”.  Simply stated, the wise men “acted” on the facts.  They saw the infusion of the light of the consciousness of spirit within their fellow being and moved towards this new expression to bring gifts and celebrate its existence.  And, the “wise men” are still pointing us to the light of Spirit today, calling us to act upon our knowledge….to move us towards the wisdom they embodied.

So on this Christmas, I call on all of us to join in this movement from knowledge to wisdom.  Each of us on our own life’s path have learned our own “facts” about Christmas.  Each of us may carry our own intellectual understanding about the consciousness embedded in every human and the fact that we are all interrelated.  But these are just the facts ma’am.

This Christmas as you share in the joy of celebration with friends and family, as you both give and receive gifts, may all of this experience ignite within you wisdom.  May you look upon and truly experience everyone as the miracle expression of that divine consciousness.  Look deeper,  beyond the past and the history of your story with that person, and truly experience that essence of that special light that shines within them.   And as you move from “knowing” that we are all one to truly living in that place of wisdom where you act and embody oneness in all of your affairs, you and I will evolve to that place where we are all called – where there is forever peace on earth and goodwill towards all humanity.

May everyday be Christmas.  Merry Christmas!

Mark

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Categories Featured Article, Positive Evolution, 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

PS- I hope you like these articles.  If you do, don’t forget to pass along to your friends, to sign up for our RSS feed on the Conscious Bridge website, and to friend us on Facebook!

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

For Our Children’s Children

August 16, 2010 //
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Cayla and AmelieWhy is it important to me to continue to talk about how we can move to our highest future?   There are certainly a lot of other things I could be doing with my time.  And, what exactly do I mean by our “highest future” anyway?

Recently I was interviewed on a public radio station about this web site and the talks and classes I conduct around “positive evolution” and our “highest future” (a listing of my upcoming talks can be found on the “bridge” web site by clicking on “event schedule” on the top of any page).  In preparation for the interview, I stopped and reflected upon “just why exactly am I doing this, again?”.  What came out of that reflection was the following “manifesto”.  I share it with you so that you can reflect upon what you want for our future.

Conscious Bridge Manifesto

The purpose of the Conscious Bridge website as well as its related teachings (talks, classes, etc.) are to foster an awareness of the following:

  • Humanity is at a critical point in its history
  • There is a possibility for either a bleak or wonderful future.
  • Each person plays a role in the future we choose.
  • Where we focus our energy, our attention, our thoughts, our actions is how we choose.
  • Humanity’s challenges allow us to learn what we do not want as well as what we do want for our future–we can reframe the events towards the positive and where we want to go.
  • These lessons allow us to create a vision for humanity’s highest future.
  • Although there is no consensus on this highest future, there are useful first steps that can guide us.
  • Each of us must hold a vision for our highest future.
  • Each of us must keep our thoughts and actions focused on the highest future.
  • Each of us must treat others with dignity and respect, focusing on our similarities more than our differences.
  • Each of us must follow a plan for our personal development and evolution that develops our body, mind and spirit; works to heal our shadow; strengthens our relationships; and, develops our service to the world.
  • Each of us must become familiar with the issues facing the planet, pick one that calls to us, and move into action on it.
  • Each of us must work to develop partnerships and coalitions that move us in the direction of our highest future.

 

The term “Conscious Bridge” relates to the necessity of our becoming “conscious” of our role in guiding humanity to its highest future.  The word “Bridge” relates to moving us from the world we currently experience to the one of our dreams.  “Bridge” also references the importance of breaking down our sense of separation and division from one another, bridging our differences, and moving into a greater experience of unity.

Some current visions for our highest future that offer guidance:

  • United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  • United Nations Millennium Goals
  • Centers for Spiritual Living Global Heart Vision

 

Aspects of a vision for our highest future or “a world that works for everyone”:

  • We all have access to clean water, adequate food, and education.
  • We all have the right to life, liberty and security.
  • We live in peace.
  • We all have access to economic and social advancement.
  • We experience a melding of science and spirituality.
  • We have the freedom to individually express our unique creative abilities.
  • We live recognizing the interconnectedness of everything.
  • We act as good stewards of the Earth and its resources.
  • We purposefully use the power of our consciousness.
  • We meet our individual needs while meeting the needs of the greater whole.
  • We recognize we are evolving and consciously cooperate with the process.
  • We recognize we are on a spiritual path to be reunited with our source.

 

Bottom line

There are certainly some challenges we face based upon the direction that humanity is headed.  We can continue down this path of negativity where humanity harms itself with war, violence, unfair distribution of resources, one “winning” at the expense of others, and the general treatment of one another as if we are all not related somehow.  And, we can also continue down this path of destruction of the planet such that as it “rights itself” with mechanisms such as global warming, humanity ultimately suffers.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  We can change our direction.

I guess the bottom line for me is that I am ultimately optimistic about where humanity will eventually end up.  I am certain that our ultimate goal in our evolution in consciousness will be complete awareness of the unity and oneness of all life.  The question really is—we will wake up and take a more direct path in that evolutionary process or will we continue down the path of hardship before events get so harsh that we have no other course?

As a father and grandfather (my granddaughters Cayla and Amelie are pictured above), I care about the world my children and grandchildren are inheriting.  I truly want them to live in a world where everyone is treated with dignity and respect and peace is the norm.  I want them to live in a world where we care about the Earth and are good caretakers of our home.  I do not want them to come to me and ask “why didn’t you do something when you knew where we were headed?”  How can we “know” but not “act”?

Each of us knows the world that we want to pass along to our children’s children.  Each of us must step up and act on that knowledge now.

Mark Gilbert

NOTE–please redistribute this article to your friends and family.  Please encourage them to sign up for updates on the Conscious Bridge website by clicking on any of the orange “subscribe” buttons or to “follow” us on Facebook by clicking on the “follow this blog” button on the right side of any page.  Also, encourage them to pick an issue on which they are passionate about and take action!

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Categories Change Agent, Culture, Featured Article, Politics
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