Tim Tebow has sure fired up the Denver Broncos and at the same time ignited a firestorm of response to his unorthodox style of play and his Orthodox display of Christian faith. Tebow has become a flashpoint for supporters and attackers to clash over in our ongoing culture wars. It’s a fascinating story to watch. I keep wondering what greater understanding is coming out of this debate for us all. Here are some thoughts on that subject – Read the rest of this entry »
Evolution to Oneness
Archives for posts with tag: worldviews
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
Have you ever had that wild thought of what it would be like to go back to some point in your past with your present day wisdom? I know I have had that fantasy from time to time.
Oftentimes this daydream relates to some choices we made where we would like to go back and make a different choice. The reality of course, is that we made the perfect choice originally so that we could experience the learning that path gave us. The wisdom we have now is a result of having made that choice.
Taking Our Country Back?
There’s an interesting phenomenon going on right now with a vocal minority within the United States. One of the chants of this group is that we need to “take our country back”. What do they mean by this?
On one hand, taking something back implies that someone else ended up with something that belonged to you. You see they have what you want and you want them to return it. I believe this is the connotation most of these people imply by the use of this phrase. Yet our country belongs to all of us, not just this group to whom the media gives so much attention. Our country does not exist for any minority to “take back”. I’m sure they see their statement as a type of rallying call to get like-minded people to join them so as to become the majority.
However when I hear them say “take our country back”, two concerns come to me. The first is the implication that somehow their country was “taken from them” and some sort of radical action is needed to get it back. It wasn’t taken from them. As always, our leadership is always a product of our electoral process. It was the majority of our country who voted in the current political leadership. As always, if we are displeased with our current leadership, we can always work forward towards the next election and vote in a change. Which brings me to my second concern, whenever we do vote in new leadership, let’s hope it is “taking us forward” rather than “taking us back”.
This phrase carries this double meaning — it can be seen as a desire to go backwards, to go back in time. It’s my opinion that many of the people who shout that they want to take our country back hold as part of their motivation a desire (perhaps even subconsciously) to return to an earlier time and era. Yet if we’re honest with ourselves, then we would admit that for most people this past was not that great a place as compared to today. These nostalgia seekers are wearing rose-colored glasses. Most people have many more rights and freedoms now than they did years ago.
So why the desire to return to the past? I believe it’s caused by today’s pace of life. Who among us doesn’t feel that the United States and the world are in the midst of massive evolutionary change occurring with great rapidity? Everywhere we look, we see change. All of us are impacted by it. And we all have a choice in how we respond to it.
The Past Was a Necessary Prerequisite for the Present
Just as we cannot go back in our personal lives to those choice points in order to choose differently, neither can the world. The events and experiences of our collective history were a necessary experience for humanity’s growth into our present day situation. The direction of our evolution is always forward, never backward. We can never go back to the past because we have learned, changed and grown in who we are.
It’s just like the old saying “you can never go home”. When you go back home, although home may appear to be the same (of course it’s changed too) — you are not the same. There is no way to re-create the experiences of our nostalgic memory given the intervening growth we have experienced.
We Can Regress
Even though we can never go back, we might want to retreat. Psychologists tell us that when humans are faced with overwhelming change, they frequently seek to regress back to a place where they felt more in control. There is a self test and I’m sure most of you have taken — one where you score how much change you had in your life in the past year (death, divorce, loss or change of job, celebrate holiday, family get-together, etc.). The more change equals a higher score, representing a higher possibility for stress. World events of the past few years probably qualify most of us to score high on the test.
Both Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as well as Clare Graves’ Spiral Dynamics model point to the fact that if we experience a crisis in our life, we can regress. In Maslow’s model, our motivations are driven by ensuring that our basic needs are met first before we moved into attempting to meet higher needs (such as self-actualization or self transcendence). If we are working on a higher needs but lose our meeting of lower needs, then we regress back to that lower level. In Graves’ model we evolve through a series of worldviews which structure how we look at life. His data indicated that even if we had transcended more basic worldviews such that we now saw life at a “higher level”, a crisis could cause our regression to an earlier way of perceiving life.
Is this what is happening now with those who want to “take our country back”? Has the stress of massive sea change caused some people to regress to lower-level needs or more basic worldviews? It is a possibility in some. What do you think?
Take Our Country Forward
As stated, we all are at choice in how to respond to the stress induced by 21st century levels of change. Are we going to regress into the past seeking an illusory sense of security from how we perceived life was “back in the day”? We can daydream about going to the past with current day wisdom, but we all know we can’t walk that path. Evolution is moving humanity forward continuously.
We must resist the temptation to seek safety by going backwards. Rather we must use the knowledge and wisdom with which our evolutionary path has gifted us and use it proactively for our highest choice as we move forward. Next time someone says to you we need to “take our country back”, tell them you’d rather take it forward.
Mark Gilbert
Boston University professor of religion Stephen Prothero’s essay in a May 17 edition of the Christian Science Monitor (Stop Thinking That All Religions Are Essentially the Same) surprised me to the degree he misses the mark by dismissing what mystics and Huston Smith mean regarding the ultimate unity of religions and his failure to understand the role of worldviews in determining our spiritual beliefs.
Many parts of his commentary, I believe we can all agree upon. Are all religions the same? Just as Prothero discusses, the answer is no. Has our focus on these differences caused humanity difficulties? The answer is obviously yes. Do we collectively need to develop a realistic view of religion so that we can be respectful of our differences yet through healthy dialogue “agree to disagree” on those details? The answer is yes.
Although Prothero’s students may be allergic to arguing over their religious differences (a fact he believes is indicative of the “straight jacket of religious agreement” caused by accepting the unity of religions), much of Prothero’s essay outlines how much of the world’s religious conflict is not bound by such a belief. Both the religious conflicts described, his students avoidance of such conflict as well as Prothero’s judgment of both are all representative of different worldviews.
What’s called for here is to step out of the situation and put on what philosopher Ken Wilber would call an integral viewpoint. Individuals bound by seeing life through a pre-rational mythic lens will accept at all cost the truth of their religious beliefs even if it leads to conflict. Individuals who have grown into a pluralistic post-rational way of viewing life will place the most emphasis on the rights of others to believe as they believe. Individuals whose worldview is rational will totally dismiss the other worldviews as not being based in “reality” without realizing how their lens is defining for them what that reality is. And, more often than not, that reality is externally based upon things that can be seen and measured without taking into account an equally valid inner reality.
Using an integral viewpoint allows us to see how humanity is evolving — both internally and externally. Our outward expression of religion is evolving from the high degree of dogma and fighting over differences towards a growing tolerance and hopefully to the need to drop the attention on differences altogether. Our inner awareness of God or Spirit is also evolving too — from an external God who is different from faith to faith to our sense of a relationship with a power and intelligence that transcends all differences. Our worldviews are evolving to greater levels of acceptance of our diversity within this unity.
The Buddhists have a saying that we should focus our attention on the moon, not the fingers pointing at the moon. As Prothero focuses us upon all of the fingers of religion, of course we all see differences. Are all religions, that is the “fingers pointing”, the same? No. Much of humanity’s current viewpoints are at levels of awareness where our focus is on these differences. Mystics and Huston Smith, when they discuss the convergence of religion, their focus is not upon the religions being the same, but rather upon where they are all pointing — the “moon”, that which is beyond words — the one God or Spirit.
Mark
What's past is prologue...
Recently, the Texas State Board of Education voted to implement changes to Texas school textbooks. These controversial changes appear to implement a bias towards a conservative right leaning view of history. These changes included a greater emphasis on the conservative resurgence of recent years, reducing the scope of coverage on Latino history and culture, limiting certain references to Thomas Jefferson in the founding of our country, and more. Due to the number of books Texas buys, there are concerns that these decisions will cascade into the books available for other states.
These changes have set off a debate regarding what exactly is history, who gets to decide what our history actually is? This debate is not new… I’ve heard it said before, that the winners (meaning whoever holds power) get to define history. As power changes hands, the presented history generally gets rewritten.
One History?
It’s easy to believe that there is only “one history.” After all, a review of the past with objective eyes should tend to see the same history. The issue, of course, is the difficulty we all have in being completely objective. No matter how objective we think we really are, we have cultural, and worldview biases, which creep in and cover the lens by which we see life.
Personally I don’t agree with the changes the Texas State Board of Education is making. But I’m also not so naïve to believe that the existing textbooks were not created without another set of biases affecting them. Whenever a book is written or class content is being assembled, some decisions are made. Those decisions, always represent the worldview of the people who are deciding.
So on and on it goes, back and forth, rewriting and rewriting history, tweaking it towards what we’d like to emphasize. Will we ever agree on one objective history?
One Future?
I frequently call for us to consider the highest possibilities for our future. But what does that really mean? I know what it means to me. Yet it might mean something different to you.
If we can’t agree on our past, if our past is constantly being modified by the worldview of those in power, but how can we ever agree on what’s best for our future? The human truth is that we may never get consensus on what our highest future should be. There might be some general concepts on which most of us could agree, then we would have differences of opinion on how to best move forward towards implementing those concepts.
For example, we might all agree that a positive future is one where all people have access to clean drinking water. But beyond that agreement, I suspect we might disagree on the best way to create that reality.
The variety of human beliefs and human worldviews appears to be a reality that will always be part of our world. Truth be told, I’m not sure many of us would want to live in a world where we all thought alike. If we all thought the same thing, it would be like a closed system with no influx of new life and energy. Like the Dead Sea, the world would become very stagnant. The variety of ideas ensures newness and growth.
Yet even if we never can agree totally on what the best idea for our collective future really is, I still believe holding conversations around that future and setting intentions towards it are an important task for humanity.
Tomorrow — I want to look at one vision statement for that highest possible future, the global heart vision statement for the Centers for Spiritual Living. We will review it and ask ourselves to consider what it really means. To the degree it gives us a blueprint for a positive future, we will come back to Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s book “Switch” to see what suggestions it offers us in moving towards that future.
To be continued…
Mark
So what is "heaven"? (most of us agree on what sex is!)
That’s the provocative title of a book written by a friend of mine a back in 1998. I’ve never met Lee Eric Smith in person, but somehow we became Internet friends 10 years ago. At the moment I don’t exactly recall how we connected, but somehow I ended up buying his book and corresponding with him via e-mail. I’ll come back to his provocative title question in a moment.
The Power of Questions
The power in Lee’s book is that it asks questions that make us think without giving us any “answers”. After a brief introduction, he simply poses 175 questions designed to make us think about our spiritual and religious beliefs. For a short while after he published his book, Lee coordinated a weekly e-mail discussion to which I routinely contributed. Those of us on the distribution list would get a new question each week to ponder along with a summary of the thoughts from people who answered the previous week’s question. His process was unique at the time, but seems now commonplace in the world of blog communications.
For me there was great power in pondering the questions. I gained great personal insights by digging deep within to consider what I really thought about the question being posed. There were many times that I felt that my answers came from somewhere beyond me. The process of contemplation and allowing wisdom to flow through me has since become one of my deepest spiritual practices. I thank Lee for opening the door to this insight. In time, his weekly e-mails stopped along with our communication. I’ve often wondered where he is.
The power of questions continued to unfold in my life. A number of years ago I met Gregg Levoy, author of the book “Callings”, with whom I remain friends to this day. I attended a couple of Gregg’s workshops from which I was reminded of the immense power that can come from pondering a deep question. Gregg has an interesting style of breaking up his lecture and stories with periods where he asks questions such as “if you came to a crossroads with signs pointing in two different directions, what words would be on the signs?” He gives you a few moments to think about the question and write down a brief response before going on to his next question. As I found this process so powerful, I have borrowed Greg’s technique and developed similar questions for some of my own classes.
More recently, another friend of mine, Norm Bouchard, has published a book entitled “29 Questions for the Ordinary Life.” Once again, we are invited into the power of asking ourselves deep questions. Norm’s book causes us to consider such questions as “what would I do today if I were brave?” or “how can I show gratitude in my life?” After offering us a question, Norm gives us a brief story to draw us deeper into contemplation. It’s an effective technique, and I recommend his book.
Therefore tomorrow, we will delve deeper into the powerful technique used by Lee, Gregg, Norm, myself as well as many others… I will offer you some questions for your own contemplation….10 questions to further your personal evolution.
So, is There Sex in Heaven?
So back to Lee Eric Smith’s question… although I don’t recall if Lee ever asked this question as part of his weekly e-mail, if he had, I probably would’ve said something along the lines of “Heaven is not a place we go to, Heaven is a state of mind in each human, how we choose to live right now determines whether we are in “heaven” or not… and sex is simply part of the wonderful glorious aspects of living right now as a human.”
Re-pondering his question 10 years later, my answer expands a bit. I would have to say now “it depends”. It depends upon your worldview. If you hold a traditional worldview, where heaven is a place you go to after death when you’ve been good here during this lifetime, then most likely you would say there is no sex in heaven because you have transcended your earthly state and no longer have the need for it. If you hold the modern materialistic worldview, then most likely you would say that heaven is an illusion, a part of an old myth that is not real, hence the question makes no real sense — something real like sex cannot exist in some imaginary place like heaven. If you hold a postmodern worldview, and perhaps have expanded your sense of God or spirit to be a power or force that exists in everything, then most likely you would answer the question similar to how I would have 10 years ago.
So how is my answer different? 10 years ago, I would have been adamant that my answer was correct and yours was wrong. Now I see how all the answers are correct, depending upon how you look at life. I see how all the answers and all our truths serve us on our path. None is better than the other. Our answers expand as our worldviews expand and as we evolve. And when we can move to a place that gives space to all the views and sees the correctness in all the answers, we move to a place where we are growing in Unity and Oneness.
And by the way, I found my friend Lee Eric Smith on Facebook and sent him a friend request.
We are truly connected.
Mark
The path calls us to move forward....
French writer Voltaire wrote this statement in the late 1700s. The quote lives on today in a number of variations. I believe it speaks to us in the 21st century, because we all see degrees of paralysis in our forward movement out of concern that the very next step will not immediately materialize our vision of perfection. We see this paralysis in our personal lives, and we see it in the world at large.
Are there areas in your life where you are not moving in the direction of your highest possibilities? I suspect most of us would say yes. Are there areas in the collective life of humanity on planet Earth where we are not moving in the direction of our highest possibilities? Again, I believe most of us would say yes to this question as well. What causes our paralysis, and how can we move forward?
What Causes Our Paralysis?
Collectively, we could probably come up with a long list for the reasons we sometimes fail to act. I simply want to offer three for us to consider today.
First, there are our own personal fears and doubts over our abilities and our worthiness. We judge ourselves in relation to some standard and feel that we up short. We peer out there in the external world and see things that we aspire to do or be and then ask ourselves “who do I think I am that I could do that?” We place other people and their performances on a pedestal. When we think that our next step will not immediately jump us onto the top of the pedestal, we hold ourselves back from even taking the next step. We fear that if we actually do move in the direction of our dreams by taking the very next step that others will judge us or we will judge ourselves because that next step did not leap us immediately to our vision of perfection. Hence, fear holds us in place.
Second, I believe we get seduced by too many choices in modern life. Scientific studies have shown that when people are given a limited number of choices, they are generally able to select one choice as “best” and move forward. These studies also show that when the number of choices rise above a certain point, we get decision paralysis. We are unable to decide out of the vast variety put before us which one is “best”. We get stuck in the analysis, and never actually make a choice. It is easy for us to see that here in the 21st century the amount of information, which flows to us is growing exponentially. Technology, the Internet, and our access to so much information is a true blessing to us, but it can, if we don’t watch out, overwhelm us.
Third, I believe that even when we can decide individually what the best next step is that would move us towards our view of perfection, we bump up against other people who believe the next best step is different because their view of perfection is different. As I have written about before, people grow through a series of worldviews, before settling into one which becomes predominant in their life. They see their worldview as the only way to look at life. The problem of course is that they talk with other people who have a different worldview and who think theirs is the only way to look at life. If these different worldviews lead to different views of what’s perfect, then the next course of action is more often than not going to differ. The ensuing argument over the course of action to take at the moment then stops us dead in our tracks from taking any action.
My Story: Medicare Part D
Voltaire’s statement was used frequently among those of us who were heavily involved in the implementation of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. It was an exciting time to be involved in the leadership of Medicare. The time frames for implementation were short, the details to work out were many, and there were high expectations and high visibility on the outcome. Many moving parts had to come together and fit. Many people who had never worked together before had to come together and agree.
I can still remember sitting in on many meetings discussing how we were going to handle some specific aspect of the program. Sometimes it seemed there were as many ideas on what to do as there were people in the room. There were many meetings where it seemed the only agreement we made was when our next meeting would be.
Yet I still recall one person who would move us forward by proclaiming that perfection was the enemy of the good. She would challenge us to let go of our individual view of perfection and agree on a view of where to go that we all agreed was “good”. In moments, when it appeared that our product was not yet “perfect” enough to move forward, she would remind us of our looming deadlines and the need for us to move forward on the product in question. With agreement that it was “good enough” we would move on.
Ultimately, Medicare Part D was implemented successfully and has gone on to be an integral part of the program. Yes, there were bumps along the road which I well remember. People may disagree as to whether the program Congress crafted was correct or not, but most people will agree that its implementation was successful. A daunting challenge with tight time frames was mastered in part by a call not to get mired in paralysis by seeking perfection.
Moving the World Forward
The world is facing many challenges today. Climate change, wars and violence, political unrest, terrorism, economic crises, lack of access to healthcare, water shortages, overpopulation — just to name a few. This is not a time to be stuck in paralysis, yet it seems sometimes we are.
Again, the overwhelming issues facing us lead us into not deciding anything. The best course of action on dealing with global warming or healthcare concerns appears in many eyes to be in conflict to the best course of action in dealing with our economic issues. It seems like no matter which issue we try to move forward on our action can appear to be detrimental to another of our concerns. Hence, we often do nothing.
And as stated, the variety of worldviews, playing out on the planet paint a variety of paths to different pictures of perfection. The traditional worldview, frequently sees perfection solely in the strength of one’s individual country even if at the expense of other countries, or seeks expansion of their religion even if at the expense of other religions. Our way is the right way, end of story. The modern worldview, says perfection is a world where you can strive and achieve personal material success even if others suffer in the process. The success of Wall Street and corporations is paramount. If wars and political unrest, create corporate profits, then they are justified. Perfection is a continued growth in our outputs and products even at the cost of human lives and the planet. The postmodern worldview, seeks equality for all but gets stuck in how to achieve it. It’s hard to meet the needs of everyone when what everyone needs appears to be so different.
So how can we move forward? The first step is to become aware where we have become stuck as a people and why. Then, it begins in our consciousness, individually. It begins with our intention to move the world forward in our small corner of the planet, doing whatever we can in our sphere of influence. We release our fear that we’re not good enough or can’t make a difference. We recognize that even if we can’t leap to the top of the pedestal of world perfection with our next step, we can at least move in that direction. We release our attachments to our personal view of what future perfection looks like. We rise up above our own worldview and seek to understand the views and needs of others. We seek common ground and focus our attention and energy on where we are like rather than where we differ. We seek collective decisions that move us in a forward direction as a people even if the decision and action is not “perfect”. All of us seeking perfection collectively, as Voltaire cautioned us, is an enemy of our collective good.
Moving Your Life Forward
Are you moving forward? Are you moving into the highest possibilities of you can be? Generally when I ask people that, most tell me they are moving forward in some areas of their lives but are stuck in others. The question then becomes — how can I move forward in the area of my life in which I’m stuck?
Once again, the first step is to become aware of where we are bogged down and why. Again, it begins in our own consciousness. It begins with our intention to move forward and to follow that intention with action.
So I ask you to consider where this paralysis is showing up in your life. Is there something you are called to do or be but don’t see how you can make the leap directly to perfection on your next step? Are you afraid that if you take the next step in the direction of your dreams that others will judge you or you will judge yourself as less than the perfect ideal?
How many of us say I just need one more experience before I am ready to move forward? There is always one more book to read, one more class to take, one more experience I need under my belt before I am ready to step forward into my calling. I’m here to tell you that now is the time to move forward. You know as well as I do that that next book or class will be followed by another book or class and then another and then another. The overwhelming amount of information flowing to us, informs us but freezes us. It’s time to say “enough”, thaw out, and move on.
Your life is calling you to move forward. Your moving forward, serves yourself and serves the planet. Your moving forward moves all of us forward. Let go of the illusion of the necessity that your next step leap you into your picture of perfection. That illusion is the enemy of you claiming your good. You are already good enough. You are already perfect.
Mark
What is "God" to you?
I’ll confess, it used to bug me. I used to run from the word God. I realize now that I was running from an old definition of the word God that no longer seemed true.
My Story
I grew up in the southern part of the United States amidst fundamentalist Christian faiths. I attended church up until I entered high school. The God that I was exposed to as a child was seen as this old man who sat upon his throne somewhere in heaven with Jesus and angels by his side. This God somehow caused the Bible to be written, and we were supposed to do what it said. I was told that all of us were born evil and we’re doomed to a fiery hell after death unless we “accepted Jesus” as our Savior, in which case, we went to heaven.
Over time, there were a number of things that made me question all of this. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the story I had been fed was a myth. Fueled by this disillusionment, I ran away from any organized religion which propagated this story. As I moved through college, marriage, children and career, my focus turned outward to worldly success and accomplishments. Off and on I found myself drawn to reading and studying other spiritual texts and spiritual practices such as meditation. As I grew older, these pulls became stronger. I came to the realization that material success was not the meaning of life. At that point, I moved more deeply on to my spiritual path. This led me to seeing God again, but not the old God that I ran from, but rather a God that was sensed as a power and presence that permeated everything.
At first, I avoided using the word God to describe this power. I used many other terms such as Spirit, Divine Intelligence, Infinite Love, etc. Ultimately, I healed the negative baggage that I held concerning the word God. Now when I use the word God, if I sense that my listener may be applying the traditional definition that I learned as a youth, then I will clarify my meaning. I also came to see the value in the Christian teachings of my youth even if they no longer worked for me. I now see how they have served and continue to serve humanity and honor those who feel called to that path.
Recently I wrote about “The Evolution of Consciousness, God and Prayer“. In that article I discussed how God doesn’t evolve, but that our view of God does. Numerous sources (such as Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory) point to the same reality. Humanity grows through worldviews (see the other article for details). I can see in my life a movement through the traditional view in my youth into the modern view in much of my adulthood and then on into a postmodern view and integral view as I have aged and hopefully grown wiser.
Change God’s Name?
Today I received my weekly e-mail newsletter from Bishop John Shelby Spong. Each week, he answers a question from one of his readers. This week, the question was in essence should we come up with a new name for God? The writer pointed out that the name God continues to hold a lot of old baggage, that it continues to be constantly misunderstood, and it appears so easy for us to drift back into the old language and the old images. He suggested we consider words such as “Love”, “Energy”, or “Life”.
In his reply Spong outlines essentially the same evolutionary process I described last week. If you’d like to sign up to receive his emails, here’s the link. He also points out as I did that our definition of the word God has evolved through time and continues to evolve.
He adds:
“I do not believe that in the last analysis any human being can actually define or redefine God, whether we call God the Holy, the Sense of Transcendence or anything else, but I do believe we can experience this presence and I do believe it is real. When we experience this presence I know of no other way to describe it except as “God.” History teaches us that the word God is never static; it is always in flux and ever changing. I suggest that we not be frightened and allow that process to continue.”
So I ask you, does the word God bug you? If it does not, then I simply ask you to be clear on what the word means to you. If it does bug you, then I invite you to become more familiar with this expanding evolutionary process. Ask yourself why the word may hold any baggage for you, to explore those emotions, to work through them and to heal them. This is the evolutionary force playing out in your life right now.
Mark
Can we really see ourselves?
Did you ever notice that we are more concerned about whether our clothes make us look fat than if our worldview makes us look arrogant? Now you might think that’s a dumb question, after all people look at us and judge us based on our appearance, right? Assuming that’s true, then our appearance is more than just our clothes and our weight, it also includes our actions and how we show up in the world.
Now I want to be very clear, I’m not advocating that we need to live our lives overly concerned about other’s opinions of us. In fact, I believe that all too often we limit being are truly authentic selves due to our concerns of what others think. I feel that we all need to follow our heart and follow our passions even if it requires us to push through the sense of being judged.
What I’m calling us to consider here is that almost all of us carry some concern about the persona we project to the world. I also want you to consider that one aspect of that persona is a worldview of life that quietly sits in your consciousness and directs much of your thinking and how you see things “out there” in the physical world. And, as this worldview (also called your value system) directs your thinking it drives your actions.
So where does arrogance come in? It’s been my experience that if a person believes that their way of seeing the world is “the right way” and “the only way”, they tend dismiss out of hand another person’s belief that arises from a different worldview. This dismissal causes them to appear arrogant. I suspect all of us have judged someone as being arrogant when they were acting from a worldview that was different from ours. Yet, have we considered when we might have been projecting the same arrogance to others?
This thought came up for me recently as I was watching an episode of PBS’s “Frontline” series, entitled “The Warning.” The show was about a woman named Brooksley Born, a member of the Clinton administration who tried to institute controls on the buying and selling of derivatives by banks and other financial institutions. She warned that the lack of regulation in this area had the potential to bring down our financial system. The program details how Born bumped heads with Alan Greenspan and his disciples. Greenspan, who had developed his beliefs from author Ayn Rand, believed that the best government was the one that governed the least. He felt that the marketplace could police itself without governmental interference. Greenspan used his power to block Born from instituting any regulations that might’ve controlled the “black box” trading of derivatives. His arrogance based on his worldview precluded him from seeing any value in Born’s opinions. At the conclusion of the PBS program, Greenspan is shown being questioned by Congress after the recent financial meltdown. He acknowledges that these events have led him to change his “view” on the ability of marketplaces to police themselves. We are all continuing to pay due to the arrogance of Greenspan and those he influenced.
Social scientists have measured and labeled a series of common worldviews through which humans grow before each of us finally settle into a predominant one. Although we may have moved through “lower” ways of looking at life before settling into the lens which drives our thinking, we frequently do not acknowledge these other viewpoints exist. Nor do we acknowledge the existence of levels of thinking that may be “above” our level. Our inability to recognize that there are other valid ways of looking at life frequently leads to our appearing arrogant.
There are three predominant value systems playing out in the United States today. One level is frequently called the “mythic” or “traditional” worldview. In Spiral Dynamics, this is the blue meme. This level is characterized by a desire to bring order and stability to everything, black-and-white moralistic thinking, controlling impulses, sacrificing now for a reward later, etc. We see this level in fundamentalist Christians and in people with an attitude of “America — love it or leave it”. The next level is called “rational” or “modern”. In Spiral Dynamics this is the orange meme. This level is characterized by an emphasis on worldly success and material abundance, science and technology as the answer to life, playing to win and enjoying the competition, etc. We see this level in materialistic scientists and Wall Street bankers. The third level is called “pluralistic” or “postmodern”. In Spiral Dynamics, this is the green meme. This level is characterized by an emphasis on an exploration of our inner being, seeking a sense of community, reaching decisions through consensus, etc. We see this in New Age thinkers, and Greenpeace advocates.
Now I have over simplified these levels for the sake of brevity, so if you wish to explore it more there are a number of links and other articles on the Conscious Bridge website which can take you to a more in-depth discussion. One thing that all of these models point out is that when you’re thinking out of one of these value systems, you can’t even acknowledge the other levels exist. You simply can’t understand why people think like they do. Yet all of these models point to the existence of a “higher” level where you begin to see and acknowledge that these multiple viewpoints not only exist, they each have validity. In Spiral Dynamics, this is called this the leap from “tier 1″ thinking to “tier 2″ thinking.
We bump into the arrogance of tier 1 thinking all the time. Alan Greenspan appears to have been locked in tier 1 orange meme thinking. Although I enjoy the writings of scientist Richard Dawkins, his overly materialistic way of seeing the world and denying the existence of God shows him locked in tier 1 orange meme thinking and makes him frequently come across as arrogant. The so-called “skeptics” who go to great lengths to debunk any scientific evidence that supports the reality of paranormal phenomena also appear to be caught in the arrogance of their worldview.
Many of us have felt the judgmental arrogance of fundamentalist Christians, who in their zeal to “save us” have ended up condemning us when we didn’t convert to their way of seeing life. David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons in their recent book “UnChristian” seek to advise other Christians that the tactics they use to convert others actually can serve to turn them off. They use statistical data and stories to try and convince their fellow believers to change their approach in how to seek converts. What was significant to me about this book was that the authors could see that the traditional Christian worldview was leading them be perceived as arrogant by others.
There are plenty of examples where postmodern green meme, thinking leads to arrogance as well. I’ve heard ecologists who have belittled the thinking of others who denied the existence of global warming . I’ve heard “spiritual people” ignorantly express arrogant statements about Christian believers and their faith. The point is, none of us are immune from arrogance arising out of our value system.
The key is to become conscious of the impact of our worldview on our thinking. We must move into seeing the world integrally with second tier consciousness. We must come to value all of the worldviews and see the truth and gifts they have given us. Each level of thinking exist for a purpose. Individually, each of us has moved or will move through every level, either in this life time or in some future existence. When in our lives we experience arrogance from others who believe differently from us, we need to try to take their perspective and understand why they think like they think. We don’t have to agree with them, we simply need to seek to understand them. And, ultimately we need to see their arrogance as a mirror being held up to us so that we can see and release any arrogance we may exhibit. The more each of us can heal our arrogance, the more compassion we can display for others and the more we can create a a world that works for everyone.
So today as we present our persona to the world, as we check ourselves in our metaphysical mirror, let’s make sure we’re not wearing clothes that make us look arrogant.
Mark
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