In my post on having an avatar, I wrote of the possibility of humanity waking up from our collective slumber and said I would write more later on that subject, so here goes.
It is very easy to look at the current state of the world and the “human condition” and get very discouraged and fearful about the future of our planet and all the creatures that inhabit our collective space ship. To see evidence that there is reason for optimism, maybe we need to examine our way of seeing. Camera lenses get their design from our physical eyes and our eyes are capable of zooming in and focusing on details but are also capable of wide angle viewing. But the kind of vision I am referring to is way of seeing I will call awareness vision or you might say mental vision. And just as with cameras or our physical eyes, we can expand our awareness vision to have a larger perspective or context on ourselves and our planet. To gain this larger perspective we have to bring time into our awareness seeing and look at human history. Continuing our camera analogy, we need to introduce time lapse photography vision. And in looking at human history we need to ask, has there been progress in human development over the passage of hundreds and even thousands of year? And yes, there has been ups and downs but my own personal conclusion is that, yes we have made much progress and that the progress is accelerating.
Some might conclude I am referring to evolution but I am not referring to physical evolution of species and survival of the fittest. Rather I am looking at consciousness evolution. By consciousness I am including our mental abilities, our emotional and empathetic connectivity capacity and our spiritual capacity. By spiritual I am making a distinction between institutionalized religion and spirituality as a quest centered on our existence, i.e., awareness of the whole of existence. As consciousness, I believe humanity is evolving in a way that many are characterizing as awakening.
Some might ask, how can you say there has been progress and that humanity is waking from a very long state of unconsciousness when we are in a ten year long war, winding down another and terrorists are plotting to kill us? So let’s look with our wide angle time lapse vision at some possible evidence for our progressive consciousness evolution. I can’t cover every piece of evidence in a short blog post but I will cover some highlights.
Possible evidence of humanity waking from our slumber:
- Technology has progressed from writing on stones, invention of the printing press and books to the modern day computer with the internet. All this technology progress has allowed us to advance literacy and learning to levels that could not be imagined a few hundred years ago. An example of the effect of books on consciousness evolution is found in the historical printing of the Bible. For hundreds of year the Bible was written only in Greek and Latin and the priesthood were the sole interpreters. Then some 400 years ago an Englishman named William Tilden dared to translate the Bible into English which was the start of everyone having access to the Bible. Unfortunately the Church priesthood had him burned at the stake but they were not able to stop the proliferation of the Bible. See leading thought leader Peter Russell’s “Global Brain” and “Waking Up in Time” for an analysis of how technology and the internet is contributing to our awakening and connecting with each. Go to: www.peterrussell.com
- The advance of science has brought us the study of physics which has given us the ability to literally look into the composition of existence and our place in it. Of course it has also brought nuclear weapons and the ability to blow up the planet but more and more people are waking up to such insanity. And science is what has lead to all the advances in Technology.
- Human rights is another area where our progress is evident. Not that long ago human rights did not exist. Rights were only for rulers and priests. The Magna Carter expanded rights to the nobility and then human rights for all white people was invented with the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately it took the civil war to end slavery; and along with WW2 it was proof that much of our progress has required cataclysmic events. In my lifetime we have witnessed major progress with the enactment of civil rights legislation. In returning to live in my home town after 50 years, I see major progress in race relations. There is still much resistance to a black president but I see blacks and whites working together in ways that would not have been possible 50 years ago.
- And then there is what is loosely called the self-help movement or more precise, the personal development movement which includes books, seminars, weekend workshops, teleseminars, psychotherapy, meditation and organizations devoted entirely to “awakening”. This movement has grown in the space of about 50 years when it was non-existent to billions per year being being spent in this field. I remember looking for my first personal development book in about 1960(I think it was the classic self-help “Think and Grow Rich”) in Atlanta, GA and having a hard time finding it. Now there are entire sections of book stores devoted to this field and thousands of ebooks can be purchased and each downloaded in under 30 seconds to an ipad and iphone simultaneously.
What I am calling a movement seems to have a life of its own and I think a more appropriate name would be the Evolving Self. Speaking personally, I have been involved with the Evolving Self for over 30 years. I am passionately committed to participating in following the Liberation Path and have experienced immense personal benefits for having participated and have contributed to others having the same experiences. When I look back at who I was when I started down the path and who I am now, I am very grateful and feel very fortunate for having chosen the path. I remember my first seminar in May of 1979 and when the double doors closed behind some 250 of us, I remember thinking, my life will never be the same after this. And I was right.
And there are times when I stop on the path and ask, when do I arrive? When I do, I remember a line from a poem by T. S. Elliot....
“We must not cease from our
exploration and the end of
all our exploring will be to
arrive where we began and
to know the place for the
first time”
Jimmy Wilson
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