Why do you do the things you do each day? Have you ever stopped to consider it? Why is one thing more important to you than another? Why do the things that matter to you seem to change from moment to moment in some cases, while other motivators seem to change more slowly.
I didn’t really think about any of this much back in the day when I was young. Those bigger questions just weren’t on my mind. Oh yeah, I recall Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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:
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
Okay, it’s time! It’s time to let go of your need to be right. It’s time to release your need to feel superior. It’s time to stop being judgmental towards those who think differently from you. It’s time to notice when someone upsets you so you can allow your negative emotion to evaporate away. It’s time to be kind.
The Dalai Lama has it right – he says his religion is kindness – period. That ubiquitous commercial asks us “what’s in your wallet?” I’m asking you “what’s in your consciousness?” Is it kindness? If not, time to get some religion Dalai Lama style!
By the way – whether you realize it or not – you do have some kind of “religion”. By that, I mean you hold a set of beliefs about the world and how it works. You have a worldview that drives your decisions and actions whether you are a member of an “organized religion” or not and whether you believe in God or not. That worldview is your “religion”.
Does your religion allow you to “be kind” to those who believe differently from you? Folks, we are talking the “Golden Rule” here – do onto others as you would have them do onto you. Treat others like you want to be treated. Sounds good until someone pushes our buttons.
Okay – who pushes your buttons? From my observations, depending upon your particular beliefs, here some known button pushers:
Did you find someone in this list that pushes your buttons? I know I did. How can you move to kindness in regards to these people? How can you have your buttons pushed and still live by the Golden Rule?
First, let me be very clear, I am neither condoning nor asking you to condone any inappropriate behavior. Nor am I asking you to be any kind of doormat that allows people to walk all over you. You can be kind while maintaining healthy boundaries towards people who act differently or are unkind.
Here are some simple steps (which I admit are not necessarily easy) to move you into greater levels of kindness:
Be aware: Notice who upsets you. Recognize the situations and people who take you away from your inclination to be kind.
Pause before acting: Don’t jump to any normal negative reaction. Consciously create a small gap in time between the upsetting situation and your reaction. This small gap is like hitting the pause button giving you time to choose.
Consciously choose kindness: Ask yourself no matter what the situation, if I were the other person, how what I want to be treated? What is the most loving, honoring response in this situation? You can still give your opinion, you can still disagree – but your response even in such cases can be kind. Wayne Dyer says that when he’s given a choice between being right and being kind, he finds the best choice is always to be kind. I agree.
If each of us could practice these simple steps and be kind towards one another, then we could move away from this angry political rhetoric and violent behavior that has risen in our country in the recent past. Some of you may be thinking “well, it sounds good, but I’m not going to be kind while the other person is being mean”. If you’re waiting on the other person to go first, kindness might not happen. They might be waiting on you! But whether they are or not, it takes someone to be brave enough to go first.
Be brave! Be kind! The time is now! The choice is yours…
Blessings.
Mark Gilbert
Last time we looked at how our culture teaches us to chase after money. The one with the most money wins. Yet, I suggested that we change how we view money – from seeing it as this external something to more of the divine energetic flow. I’m not naïve – I realize changing this perception is not easy, so much of our culture reinforces external wealth is an indicator of our personal value.
I ended last time by suggesting we look at the phrase “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Again, as stated previously, this phrase implies that the more we have this “emotional desire” to accumulate this external thing “money”, then the more we are inclined “to do bad things”. What I want to consider this time is – “what is love?” and “what is evil”?
Just as our perception of money is misdirected outward, so is our view of love. What, you say? Isn’t love an emotion that we feel? Isn’t the fact that it’s an emotion mean that it’s inside us? Yes, the emotion or feeling is something we identify as being within us, but that which has the power to give rise to this emotion or feeling is all too frequently an object separate and apart from ourselves.
We look “out there” and attach our love to people, things and experiences. Too often we place conditions on our experience of love. I will love you if you act a certain way such as loving me in return or doing as I say. I will love my dinner if it is food I like. I will love my vacation if it goes as I intended. Love is all too often something we give and withhold in an attempt to control life out there.
Yet just as money does not buy us happiness, neither is our love truly dependent upon external conditions. Again, this is not what our culture teaches us normally – but we can choose to experience love separate and apart from what goes on in our lives. You can choose to “be love” in all circumstances, no matter what those around you do or say.
Can you love your children even if they make life choices different from you? Can you love your lover as you watch them leave your life? Can you love your life even if events are not what you want? The fact is, if you really love your children, your lover or anyone else – then you simply love them and want them to be happy totally independent of their actions. And, if you love your life in spite of any negative conditions, you may come to notice those conditions disappearing.
So love is truly not dependent on stuff out there. More so, love is more than simply the emotion or feeling that we experience and label as “love”. Love is really an energetic force, just as money is. Love is a flow that moves through our lives, just as money. Love is a force that binds us and connects us to that which is beyond us.
The truth for me is this: although we think we are entities separate and apart from one another, we are really all part of a great and wonderful “oneness”. Money is an energetic flow that moves the abundance of life through this oneness, connecting us. Love is an inner force that redirects our attention off of ourselves and out there to that which appears to be “other” from us, and in the process connecting us.
As long as we believe that the experience of this flow is dependent on some “other” to which we have attached our attention, then we tend to stagnate the flow. When we can delink our love as being dependent on this “other”, then we allow our love to flow freely. When we simply “love”, then we move to a sweet space where we begin to experience the taste of “oneness”. This undifferentiated sense of love breaks down our barrier of feeling separate and shifts us into a sense of connectedness.
This is why many mystics and philosophers have referred to love as an “evolutionary force”. Our evolutionary path is a movement within our consciousness – from the lower levels within minerals, plants and lower animals to the place within humanity where we have self-awareness – we know that we know – to where we sense our place within the cosmos as conscious co-creators – to a return from where we originally began: knowing we are all one. Love is that energetic force within us pushing us along to our remembrance.
This is why Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said that “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
So if money is an energetic flow of the abundance of life moving through us, and love is an energetic evolutionary force that is pulling us out of our sense of separation and back into our awareness of our unity, then what is “evil”? As the Bible says – The love of money is the root of all evil. If we link our experience of love to the accumulation of money, we are both limiting the power of love to bring us into the sense of connectedness with others and blocking its flow of abundance through the oneness of life.
Anytime we block the flow of money or limit the flow of love or do anything at all that harms some aspect of the One, then we are really hurting ourselves. Evil is any harmful action based in a forgetting that we are all One.
Mark
We Americans love money. So many aspects of our culture are set up to reinforce the idea that the most successful person is the one with the most money.
Last night Mary and I went and saw a new movie which truly reinforces this cultural pattern. The movie was called “Race to Nowhere” and is a commentary on our educational system. The filmmaker was a mother who had become concerned over her children’s stress caused by excessive school expectations. I highly recommend the film.
Here’s a quick summary. Our culture measures success by wealth. We believe (although the film points out that it’s not quite true) that a college degree from a prestigious school leads to a higher income. Competition to get into the best colleges has led to these institutions accepting only a fraction of applicants, the ones with the highest GPAs and best portfolios of activities from high school. This has led to high school students taking more AP classes to raise their GPA and doing more extracurricular activities to build their portfolio. This competition has cascaded down into the lower grades and even into kindergarten. Parents, teachers and students have gotten on a treadmill that has led to more homework, less free time and more stress – all to ensure they don’t get left behind in their race for “the good life”. Coupled with the increased emphasis on only “teaching to the test” which drives school funding, we are creating adults who know how to memorize facts but not how to think or reason.
The movie ends with a bit of hope. It offers some examples of schools seeking to teach the “whole person”. It provides a number of suggestions for ways we can retool our educational system so that it will produce well-rounded and happy students. One idea mentioned was to do away with external grades as a measurement of success. In their place it asks why not gauge the student’ s achievement by a portfolio of products they produce to show what they have learned or by gauging their happiness? One telling comment which points out how difficult this will be was made by an author who writes about reforming our schools in this direction – he admitted that even he sometimes stresses over what schools his kids will get into. It’s tough to buck this cultural trend.
The movie reminded me about what I see as our confusion over what money actually represents. Most Americans who are chasing wealth see money as this “external thing” which the more they accumulate, the happier they will be. It is true that a certain level of money allows us to meet basic needs and desires. But at a certain income level we reach a point where more money is not really needed. At these higher levels of personal income, more money is only serving to allow us more luxuries and to feed our competitive sense that we are more successful than others. It doesn’t really make us happier. In fact there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that an obsession over money can actually make us more unhappy.
We chase stuff outside us. I want external higher grades so that I can go to external better schools so that I can get a better external job that pays me more external money so I can buy more and more external stuff. We look “out there” for happiness when the reality is it comes from within.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with money. I am suggesting we change how we look at it. Rather than seeing it as this external stuff we are trying to get more of, let’s see it as an energetic flow of life. It is “currency”, flowing like a river through and around us. It provides a means for us to enjoy this life experience provided we don’t try to cling to this energetic flow so that it stagnates. We bless it as it moves through our lives.
I love how Eric Butterworth puts it in his book “Spiritual Economics “. He says,” money is an enabling symbol. It is a tangible representation of intangible universal substance… Money is an enabling symbol that gives rise to faith and trust, credit in cooperation, which starts a flow of activity.… It is a currency or creative flow of divine activity.”
The point is – if we can change our perception of money from this external thing we are chasing to seeing it simply as a tangible representation of the flow of energy in our lives, then we can become less hung up on “having more money so as to have more happiness”. Must they be linked? No. Your happiness is your choice, it’s not dependent on having more money.
Which brings us to “love”. We’ve all heard the expression “money is the root of all evil”. Of course, the correct quote is “the love of money is the root of all evil”. On the surface, this statement implies the more we have this “emotional desire” to accumulate this external thing “money”, then the more we are inclined “to do bad things”. But if money is not this external thing but rather an energetic flow, maybe we had better stop and consider “what is love?” and “what is evil?” We will see some interesting parallels in part two of this article next time.
Mark
Today, we conclude our self dialogue in exploring our evolution through the third dimension and our opportunity to transcend it….. Click here to read part one in which we explored what we mean by the third dimension, how we came to be in and our evolution through it. Click here to read part two in which we discussed why it is imperative for each of us to consciously take control of our personal evolution and what that means. Today, we finish our discussion considering our collective evolution and transcendence.
So, as our personal evolution unfolds and we become more aware of our interrelationship to everyone, how does that relate to the collective evolution of humanity?
As mentioned previously, as we as individuals evolve or grow in consciousness or become enlightened… however you wish to describe it… we become more aware and truly embody the reality that we are all interconnected — that we are all part of some grand “oneness”. As that occurs, it is inevitable that we will grow in our sense of love and concern for all our fellow beings. This is one area where religions have served us. There is a common thread in all faiths that teach the Golden Rule — do unto others as you would have them do onto you. This call to ethical behavior served us early in our evolutionary process as we banded together in tribes and cities and countries. The more we all cooperated within “our group”, the more our group flourished. Yet the Golden Rule’ s guidance was never limited to any one group. As we expand our sense of the “other” to greater and greater degrees, soon it envelops all humanity, all life, the planet, and ultimately the universe in total. What would it mean to treat every person on the planet as we would wish to be treated? What would it mean if we treated the planet and the universe as we would wish to be treated?
There is certainly plenty of evidence that we do not treat one another nor the planet as we would like to be treated. What do you think it would be like if we did?
I suspect most of us could agree on many of the characteristics of such a world, but there is obviously no consensus. I have my vision of what such a world might look like. First, each person would have access to the basic rights as outlined by the United Nations–for adequate water, food, education, to be treated with dignity and respect, to be able to live with certain freedoms. Yet beyond that, each person would have a reverence for all life — as we look outward, we would see ourselves in other people, in animals, in plants — we would sense our connectedness. Yes, we would continue to seek to meet our basic needs for our own lives. Yet, there would be greater awareness where our continued efforts to meet our needs crossed over into the territory of meeting “wants and desires” (stuff we exert effort towards attaining that in the big picture we don’t really “need”). There is nothing wrong with meeting wants and desires, experiencing the fullness of life in the third dimension as previously mentioned is one of the gifts of being here. Our full experience of the infinite variety of life here is one of the main purposes that we were placed here — through us spirit or infinite consciousness experiences the richness of this physical domain. However, our expanded awareness of meeting wants and desires would bring knowledge of when our efforts crossed into harming others. There is goodness in our meeting our needs, wants and desires so long as they express life. When our efforts cause harm, they no longer express life.
Could you give some specific examples of when our meeting wants and desires cause harm and no longer express life?
Sure. First, here are some larger global examples. Consider Wall Street where their desire for greater profits for their company caused harm to individual homeowners as well as our collective economy. Consider the Gulf oil spill where the combination of our government’s desire to increase domestic oil production as well as the oil company’s desire to maximize profits led to cutting corners and our ultimate ecological disaster. Consider the ongoing violence in the Middle East tied to the self-interest of particular countries or religions. In each of these cases, some group is attempting to meet its wants and desires that are beyond the level of basic needs. And, in each case such effort crossed over into harming other people or the environment — at this point they are no longer “expressing life” in its greatest expression. If the individual decision-makers in each of these cases stopped to ask themselves something like “what action can we take here that will serve the greatest number?” or “what can we do here to meet our needs that will cause no harm?”, then would they have made the choices they did? If they were truly treating others as they wish to be treated, I believe different choices would have been made. To be clear, my point here with these examples is not to debate any specific government or corporation political decision. Rather I am simply suggesting that in a possible world where all humanity lives by the Golden Rule, where the “other” they are “doing onto” is everyone and everything, there would have been other decisions, actions and outcomes.
Yet to get to that world, doesn’t it start with each one of us?
Absolutely. Each of us can examine our own lives to find examples where we are not living the Golden Rule. Do you ever cut someone off on the highway because you’re in a hurry to get where you want to go? Do you ever gossip or bad mouth someone because they don’t think or act like you want them to? Do you ever ignore someone’s request for help because for some reason you’re mad at them? Do you ever forward on some viral but untruthful e-mail because it makes a political statement you happen to favor? Do you ever judge others negatively because they’re different from you — different race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.? The point is, every day we are at choice. Are our choices in alignment with doing onto others as we would wish to be treated? As each of us grow in our personal awareness, we will sense and know how we are each stewards of this planet in the third dimension as well as caretakers and teachers for those continuing to struggle. It does not serve the collective good for us to stay mired in the third dimension, but rather it serves the greater good for us to grow and become enlightened. The more of us who move into that place in our consciousness, the greater the collective evolution of humanity.
In what ways are we “collectively evolving”?
We are growing collectively inwardly and outwardly. Inwardly, we are evolving at both a cultural level as well as in our collective consciousness. Outwardly, we might consider that our global systems — the outward expression of society such as our technology and ability to tap the collective “global brain” is also evolving.
How are we evolving culturally?
This is where I find a model of Spiral Dynamics so helpful. The data that supports this theory shows that humanity is evolving through a series of worldviews. As we make a level of needed one worldview, we evolve into a higher view of looking at life and the planet. Humanity’s earliest worldviews were centered around meeting base needs similar to Maslow’s theory we looked at previously — safety and survival, banding together in tribes, etc. Current predominate worldviews on the planet include a traditional view superseded by a modern view followed by a postmodern viewpoint. Descriptions of these levels can be found with a little research or by reading some of my other articles on the subject. Ultimately, Spiral Dynamics as well as other similar models point to our evolving to even higher levels of individual and group awareness where we are able to recognize and value the interplay of all the other levels. Interestingly, some of the characteristics at these higher levels of awareness include such factors as the melding of science and spirituality, recognizing the interconnectedness and systems interplay of everything on the planet, of an awareness of a greater unity of all. Characteristics that mystics often sy come at higher levels of awareness. Although Spiral Dynamics data shows that much of humanity are at earlier worldviews, the theory points the way towards our evolutionary future and shows that growing numbers of people are headed towards these higher worldviews.
So what do you mean by “collective consciousness” and how is it evolving?
Just as we have an individual consciousness, all of our individual consciousnesses feed one group consciousness for all of humanity. Carl Jung wrote extensively about this. What many have realized is that not only does our individual consciousness provide input into humanity’s collective consciousness but that this greater consciousness is tapped into by each of our subconscious providing silent input into our thoughts and choices. The group mind, in a sense, serves to limit us and what we see as possible. As each of us grow individually, we feed a greater level of potential for all humanity into this group consciousness raising the bar on what is considered possible for all of us.
And what about outward evidence of our evolution?
In spite of all the challenges our planet currently faces, there is plenty of evidence that we are moving into a world where humanity senses at a greater level our interconnectedness and our related expanded sense of care and concern for each other. The Internet and related phenomenon such as the rise of social media sites connects us with each other globally and immediately. There is a rising trend in corporations to be considered successful by the combination of profits and social responsibility. There is an increased tendency by individuals later in life to release careers that brought material success and move into “work” that feeds their soul. There is a rise in the number of nonprofit groups whose mission is to enhance life conditions for everyone around the planet. The United Nations continues to promote the meeting of certain basic human needs as a “right” through such efforts as their Millennium Development Goals designed to end poverty and hunger around the planet. These and similar examples point to a trend in our evolution.
So what is our role in contributing to such evolution?
Hopefully by now it’s clear. The collective consciousness of humanity evolves by our personal evolution. Humanity’s cultural and societal evolution moves forward by our personal growth. Each of us has a responsibility to answer that inner call that asks us to transcend our limits and grow to the greatest levels of possibility for our lives. Our growth occurs in our consciousness inwardly and in our actions outwardly. We previously mentioned that each of us should set our intention towards our highest possibility for our lives, to create a vision of what that looks like and then to act in alignment with that vision. We also mentioned using logic and intuition to create our individual plan as well as some components the plan should contain. Considering our collective evolution, we must add one additional aspect to our plan — service to others. There are so many issues facing our planet at this time that it’s easy to get overwhelmed and do nothing. Let go of that feeling. Pick one issue that you are passionate about and then act to do something to address it no matter how small. Add this service action to all your other personal aspects to your plan for growth. The combination of our individual actions coupled with their igniting cascading change through the “butterfly effect” will truly make a difference. Hold firm in the knowledge that to the degree that we all grow individually to transcend the third dimension, that growth supports the collective growth of all.
We sort of assume here that we wish to transcend the third dimension. Is this true?
That’s an individual decision for each of us to make based on experience and our own free will choice. I believe that ultimately more and more of us will become enlightened and realize the importance of transcending this school and playground of space and time. There may always be some who will choose to move through the third dimension, but in the vast expanse of time as experienced in the third dimension, I believe those numbers will diminish.
Any final thoughts?
Yes. One aspect of being human is that we learn and grow by the dual gifts of our intellect and our intuition. We listen to our heads and to our hearts. On the one hand, the thoughts expressed here were hopefully presented in a logical and easy to understand manner that fed your intellect. But beyond that, I hope that as your intellect resonated with the ideas presented here, it also opened your heart. French philosopher, paleontologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote about the evolution of humanity and our path as we move upward in consciousness. He described the melding of individual human minds into one global mind called the noosphere. As our consciousness grew beyond that, he pointed to what he called the “Omega point” — some point in the future that is pulling all creation towards it. So let us consider this: Spirit or Ultimate Consciousness divided itself up in awareness and embedded itself in all of life so that we could experience individuality and free will choice as we simultaneously moved upward followed the laws of evolution. This evolutionary track involved smaller pockets of consciousness coming together in greater pockets of consciousness until in humanity here on earth (and perhaps elsewhere) such consciousness crossed a threshold into self-awareness. Our personal individual pocket of consciousness is now being pulled by the process of evolution to combine with others at an even higher level of awareness that we can only imagine. What is this Omega point that is pulling us upward and onward so that we might ultimately transcend the third dimension? What force can we imagine that seeks to pull us out from our sense of separation from one another and desires to connect us in our awareness with others? What force could that be? Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “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.” That force is love. Spirit embedded in us consciousness and love. It was love that placed us here in the third dimension. It is love that is calling us home.
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So let’s turn the question around — what you think? What is your experience of the third dimension and our evolution? Do you believe we are called to transcend it or not… and why? I would love to hear your thoughts and your beliefs. Thank you for reading mine.
Mark Gilbert
My vision for a positive future is a world that works for everyone. This means at a minimum that everyone has the opportunity to live their lives expressing their unique creative abilities, to have a basic standard of living, to live in freedom, and to have the chance to strive for personal success. One should always have the opportunity to express life so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others to express their life.
Of course, this world is not our current world. As we look out at the state of the planet in 2010 we see war, violence, hunger and starvation, humans in slavery, people lacking clean drinking water and sufficient food, populations without access to adequate education or healthcare, and a prevalent mindset that seeks competitive advantage at the expense of others. The question then becomes: how do we move from our current conditions to our highest possibilities?
Three Simple Steps
Learn from the past — notice the conditions in life that are less than what we want. Draw lessons from these conditions so that we can contrast them with what we do want. Notice the positive conditions in life that are indicative of what we desire. Build on those conditions.
Set the highest intention — the past allows us to create a vision for our highest future. Create that vision in your consciousness and every day both affirm its truth for humanity and look for evidence of its manifestation. Seek to meld this conscious vision with a high degree of positive emotion so that it excites you as you see this world arriving.
Expand your circle of care and concern — who you love and care about? Contemplate that. See that group growing and expanding. Seek to love everyone.
Love Everyone?
I recognize that’s a loaded suggestion. It’s easy to conjure up in our minds a list of people who have wronged us in the past or currently upset us in some way. Many of us have had experience with people who in expressing their lives have inappropriately crossed boundaries and infringed on our lives or the lives of our loved ones.
We must seek to understand and forgive these people in our hearts. This is not to condone their behavior. This doesn’t mean seek them out and personally “forgive them”, although there can often be great healing in doing that. Our forgiving others in our heart really is about us expanding our sense of love. It’s not necessarily about the other person.
Anyone we have difficulty accepting in our hearts ultimately harms us more than it harms them. If we can step back and see the other person as a spiritual being or a fellow human walking their path as best they can, then it opens us to this place of love. There’s an old expression “there but for the grace of God, go I.” One might consider that except for a soul choice made at the moment of birth, you could’ve been walking in their shoes throughout their life. You might’ve had the same experiences, learned the same lessons, and made the same choices. The limitations you judge in them could have been yours. Seeing how “you might have been them” opens you to releasing your judgment about them.
If we are truly going to bring about a world that works for everyone, then we must all work to grow our hearts and expand our love. We must exercise our heart muscles just as we exercise our bodies. There will be those people and groups to whom the expansion of our love to include them will be relatively easy. So start there to gain an easy victory. But don’t stop there. Continue to grow and expand your circle of love to envelop even those you have difficulty accepting. A better world awaits us all by moving to that space. Don’t wait for others to do it first. Be the change you want to see.
How can you love everybody? What are your thoughts?
Mark Gilbert
Today we continue looking at some examples of beliefs that people hold that it might be time to reconsider. Again, no judgment but simply offered as food for thought. This time the focus is on relationships.
Do You See Yourself in Any of These Beliefs?
I love my spouse but they’ve got some habits that really get on my nerves. I really love them but there are these few things I would really like to change about them.
I spent all this time raising these kids, now they’re adults and they won’t listen to what I say. They’ve got their own thoughts and beliefs about everything — raising kids, religion, what they think is the best job for them, where to live and so on. I’ve tried everything to get them to change their minds and see things my way. Sometimes it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall. I know they must know how disappointed I am in them.
I love my parents but I wish they would not meddle in all of my affairs. I’m grown now and I have my own thoughts about how to do things. If I try to tell them how I want to handle stuff, they either don’t listen or get mad. If I do what they say, then I’m unhappy. I don’t do what they say, they get mad at me and I’m unhappy. I can’t win.
My boss is driving me crazy. He makes impossible demands, giving me assignments where I have to change what I’m working on. He’s never happy with the work product. He shows favoritism to other employees. I can’t seem to please him.
I really want to be in a committed relationship with a loving partner. Every time I find somebody that I think is the right one, things just don’t work out. I know it’s not me because I showered them with my love, gave them everything they wanted, but they left.
I just don’t seem to have any close friends in my life. The people around me, I just don’t seem to have anything in common with. I don’t feel like getting close to them. I can’t seem to attract into my life friends who have the same interests as me.
If You Think the Problem Is Out There, That Thought Is the Real Problem
If you see yourself in any of the above scenarios, then here are some thoughts for you to consider… but they will only resonate with you if you are open to evolving your beliefs on relationships….
You can’t control other people, you can only control yourself. Don’t try to control them.
Other people have lived their own lives which have led them to their own beliefs. It’s unrealistic to think that they are going to believe and act just as you do.
Whenever you find yourself pointing at another person as the source of your problems, stop and consider what role your thoughts and beliefs may be playing in creating the situation. Consider how you might change your thoughts about the relationship.
If you want to attract love into your life, then love people — all people. Be love.
Avoid smothering people with your love. If you truly love someone, then you allow them the freedom to be who they are called to be. This includes loving them even if they choose not to be with you.
Be who you need to be even if there are others in your life who want you to be different. Understand where they’re coming from and love them even if they’re trying to control you. If you let them, you will resent it and be unhappy and it will impact your relationship. If you follow your heart and do what you’re called to do, although you may have to deal with their displeasure, you will ultimately be happier.
If you want to attract friendships into your life, be a friend to everyone. Be open to friendships that present themselves to you.
Be a connector. When appropriate, introduce people you know who have something in common to each other. Help others to make new friends.
Look for ways to give and serve other people in all areas of your life.
Be the love you want to see in the world.
Are there any of these suggestions that you agree with? Disagree? Do you have any other suggestions? I’d love to hear!
Mark
