Earth is Like a Spiritual Elementary School (that’s on fire…)

The day after a big election is a day like any other, really. A lot has changed, but then, not that much has changed too. The problems don’t suddenly get solved, and in fact the differences and obstacles may seem more distinct and dramatic than ever. It helps me to think of it this way, just for the sake of simplifying things:

The Earth is like a spiritual elementary school, with evolving souls attending grades one through six, simultaneously. The first and second graders tend to be unsure of themselves, to feel vulnerable – they tend to isolate, feel victimized, or to become bullies – whatever it takes to make them feel acknowledged, respected, cared about. They can become intolerant, even violent…they’re fearful, they haven’t got much wisdom yet, or what you might call “ more expanded consciousness.” They get tribal, follow manipulative leaders, and want to control things without really thinking it through. They tend to believe that Darwinism means “survival of the fittest,” but it doesn’t, really…it means “survival of the most cooperatively adaptable,” so they tend to be less cooperative, and more entitled, “independent,” and “self-reliant.”

The fifth and sixth graders have gotten a little wisdom. They’ve developed a little “expanded consciousness.” They’d never hurt a fly, tend to naturally like all different kinds of people, and feel connected to everyone and to the natural world in an easy, graceful way. They’re learning that the world isn’t happening to them – it’s happening for them. They’ve learned that fear is seldom real (unless there’s a bear approaching, or a fire is out-of-control). Their community is less a ‘tribe,’ and more a collection of tolerant, “cooperatively adaptable” spirits, all along on the same ride. They know that no one can be truly independent, or totally self-reliant. We are all the same thing, on the same ride, called Earth. They possess what you might call “spiritual sanity,” and have learned that intelligent, mature, responsible stewardship will benefit everyone the most.

Our biggest problem always stems from this situation: The sixth graders can’t give their wisdom to the first graders without the first graders feeling like someone is trying to push them around – insinuating that they’re “better than them” (which in a spiritually-evolved sense, they are, but in a spiritually-evolved sense, no one is better than anyone else). So the first and second graders have to get some wisdom for themselves (usually by making painful mistakes); they tend to be haters before they become lovers. This is their hard karma, the cause-and-effect of life that everyone must pass through, to graduate, that is. Wisdom and expanded consciousness can only be attained by direct personal experience. Unfortunately, everyone in the school falls subject to the struggles of the early-grade students, and those struggles have to hurt enough to make them realize their self-centered pain is unnecessary and self-inflicted – so it’s painful for everyone. They calm down a lot, in the third and fourth grades, thank God.

Sadly, the unconscious “control” of first and second graders for the last thousand years (a drop in the geological bucket-of-time), has led to the destruction of life as-we-know-it on our Mother Earth that we see around us—the catastrophe approaching. The school is on fire. Fortunately, that sadness makes our hearts resonate more deeply with the unseen, benevolent structures of the Universe; and impending doom tends to mature a lot of people fast. Fifth and sixth graders can stay present with all the goodness in their hearts, and try to hold things together, providing enough Love to balance things out…until the kids come around.

If you think people don’t respect you; that you’re being victimized by ‘elitists’ or ‘aliens;’ that you’re somehow different (or better) than other people, or know ‘the right’ way to live; if you think violence is sometimes necessary, and that we can reserve the right to kill or inflict pain on others ‘for their own good,’ or ‘to protect our rights;’ and impose our will on others to ‘make them get it right,” well, welcome to school. Open your heart—and your ears—and realize that no one is all that important. We really are all the same, even if we don’t look like it, or dress like it, or eat like it, or pray like it…we do all love the same.

If you’re constantly shocked at the level of ignorance and violence in the world, don’t be—there’s always been that 30%, and there always will be. Bring on da Love, in large enough quantities to put out all the little fires you can. There’s a tide of Love on the rise (along with the sea level) that’ll quench the conflagration. 

Things are changing – at this school they always have and always will. But if you love it here anyway, don’t worry, soon you be moving on to Middle School.

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct on this page or online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!  

Flocks, Schools, and Spiritual Evolution (It's a Revolution)

Have you ever looked up in the sky and seen a flock of birds in flight, undulating as though they were a single living organism? Separate yet solid. Shifting fluidly, like  living expressions inside of a dynamically divine Lava Lamp.

There's something fascinating going on there that we all recognize from way down in our subliminal cellars clear up to our archetypal attics – a cooperative organization and movement, issuing from an invisible intelligence. Science has its explanations for these orders and arrangements of the natural world, but their explanations are always an effort to frame the miraculous and justify a sense of understanding and control over something that's far more beautiful to witness than it could ever be to explain.

Beneath it all though, lies that unifying intuitive understanding of our basic natural relationship to the Earth; an ever-evolving expression, being eternally expressed. We, like those birds, are doing it too. That's the reason why, even in the face of our impending catastrophe, we have so much hope–because we can always have faith in the fact that our forms are constantly rediscovering and rearranging the Self into a timeless, working whole. (Ours is the only design that isn't intelligent). But bringing the promise of that faith into reality, requires that we follow those natural, intuitive impulses of our own group.

Quantum coherence and emergent self-organization aren't confined to particles or waves, or to anthills either. Nor are they unrelated to 'magic,' or the miraculous – they're just more finely drawn evidence of it. We are all psychically connected at a profound level–at least the level of survival. That comes as no shock, does it? We're sharing enough consciousness for to all of us to know that truth. Our being 'entangled' in non-ordinary ways, sharing a 'non-local' source, and joined by an "acausal connecting principle" is obvious in our contracting reality – blossoming into global consciousness through our simultaneous personal realizations. A collective déjà vu of growing intensity. We have had to change this way before.

Those entrancing performances of flocking birds and schooling fish illustrate our own emergent human properties–not just as strategies for survival, but for our physical and spiritual evolution as well. The energy that animates those collective expressions of divine purpose – to move beautifully and harmoniously as one – insists that we now embrace our collective intelligence, and change course.

Occupation movements; the impulse to maintain internet neutrality; personal participation in the power grid; rapidly deepening ecological awareness across the generations are all examples of this movement, which, out of the mainstream, finds its  identity in a kind of modern shamanic mythology that seeks to reconnect us to Mother Earth. In our mainstream culture, it's expressed as the profoundly progressive consciousness that elected the first African-American president, or that embraces the full rights of all sexual orientations. It's a recognition of humanity – grounded in altruism, activism, spiritual evolution, and personal responsibility.

Who leads this flock of birds? Where does the order to form this expression come from? The order to behave sensibly, as birds should; to cohere to the greater energies at play in the Universe, and within each and every individual? Simply put, it's beyond us, and between us. Recognizing it within oneself, and allowing ourselves to belong to the horizontal hierarchy that this undeniable impulse organizes itself within, brings us into balance with our emergent global consciousness, and gives us our true direction. 

"There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of [flying in the noisy flock, and] being the noise...Close both eyes to see with the other eye...Open your hands, if you want to be held...Sit down in this circle."

Rumi

These emergent qualities we share are finding a rising media voice too – from the comforting spirituality of Oprah, the late Louise Hay and Wayne Dyer; to the (more 'serious') science-based ideas of Ray Kurzweil or Bruce Lipton; to the 'in-your-face' progressive moxie of Russell Brand and Daniel Pinchbeck. All of these voices represent our intuitively shifting dynamic, which is totally at odds with the destructive financial elite – stuck in it's cultural amber – that's leading us in a top-down line to global disaster.

What are our means to directly access and join this collective shift? Well, we each carry those means in our willingness to participate with humility and honesty; in the Love alive in our hearts.

Nowhere have I found a guide for following this calling, in a totally practical way, expressed as wonderfully as in the brilliant Ervin Laszlo's "Ten Commandments of a Timely Vision" (from Quantum Shift in the Global Brain, Inner Traditions, 2008). It's a beautifully usable template, which (with apologies to Mr. Laszlo) I'll try to synopsize for the sake of brevity:

1. Live in ways that enable others to live, without detracting from their chances.

2. Live in ways that respect the [absolute] right to life and economic and cultural development of all people.

3. Live in ways that safeguard the intrinsic right to life and a supportive environment.

4. Pursue happiness, freedom, and fulfillment in harmony with nature, and with consideration for others.

5. Require that your government relates to all peoples peacefully, and in a spirit of healthy cooperation.

6. Require your enterprises to accept responsibility for their effect on markets and environments, free from exploitative intentions.

7. Require (or create) the public media to provide reliable information crucial to informed decision-making.

8. Help those less privileged to live a life of dignity.

9. Encourage young and open-minded people to evolve spiritually.

10. Work with like-minded people to to preserve, restore, and maintain the balance of your neighborhood, country, and global biosphere.

Here then is the path–drawn-out–towards the great shift we all know we must take; the practically involuntary course we are already taking towards our survival and spiritual evolution. It's nothing short of the conscious suppression of the destructive values of materialism, and the recognition of all life of the planet as sacred. It isn't just an evolution I'm talking about, but will have to be a revolution of humanity, from the unnecessary waste and despair we experience now, towards its highest order. 

So, for what it's worth (humbly and honestly), I too am following the indescribable urge that's calling for revolution–a recognition of our spiritual nature; and the requirement that a just and humane respect be shown to the Earth and all it's occupants, enforced by whatever means our Intelligent Design determines us to follow...and it's not even my idea at all.

"To the knowing, all of life is a movement towards perfection; so what need have they for the excessive, the extravagant, or the extreme?"

Tao te Ching, 29

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore! 

Groundhog Day Over and Over, Until We Get it Right (Redux)

everyday will always be now

In the great Harold Ramis film, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a self-centered, materialistic egomaniac who must relive a single day over and over until he finally learns how to do it right. Unfortunately, that sounds a little too familiar to me. He has to pass through one difficult doorway after another on his path of spiritual evolution, kicking and screaming all the way. Battling with himself. Along the way, he learns some important lessons–the hard way–that we can all stand to learn.

The two biggest challenges he repeatedly meets during his everlasting day consist of knowing when to surrender his will, and learning how to take right actions. The realization of his powerlessness in the face of things he can't control, like a snowstorm (piercing the veil of denial); and then detaching from the demands of sensory gratification–the destruction of his egoic self (his "dark night of the soul"). He must learn to be of service, without expectation for rewards, and realize true humility (absolute acceptance and tolerance). Ultimately, he's rewarded with the recognition of the eternal in everyone and everything (enlightenment); and eventually, after passing through these spiritual stages, he is  able to really know Love.

In the film, our anti-hero Phil, like all of us, is forced to confront the inconvenient truth that the world doesn't revolve solely around him. Becoming aware that I'm personally not all that important or powerful is a tough nut to crack, especially when I matter so very much to myself.  Doesn't that person on the subway know that I'm trying to get somewhere? Why can't that fellow employee see that my plan is superior? And why is it that I don't I get what I logically deserve (when less deserving people do)? Of course I am getting just that, all the time. I am creating my own heavens and hells, everyday. And so, at first, Phil goes about everyday the same way, creating his own hell in a slightly different way.

Again and again, he wakes up and repeats the same aggravating mistakes, failing to recognize the patterns imposed on him by his unconscious self-centeredness. Exercising his rudeness, his arrogance, his impulsiveness, and his entitlement only leads to more and greater suffering. (Unfortunately, that sounds familiar too.)

"The mind deludes him, binding him with the bonds of the body, the sensory self, and the ego. It creates in him the sense of "I" and "mine." It makes him wander endlessly among the fruits of the actions it has caused."

Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination

Phil has to come to terms with the harsh truth that he's subject to the same world that all of us must endure, and hopefully transcend. (Don't they know who I think I am?) The failure to find any relief in sensory gratification, and the shattering of his egoic self-importance finally leads him to despair, helplessness, and a profound depression that results in a spree of suicidal self-destruction. Suicide is the urge to kill the self that causes pain, and so he wakes up to this life again, and again–always failing to kill the proper Phil. The Phil that needs to die.

"The ego's intelligence is only a pale reflection of pure consciousness that robs us of our true nature of joy. By identifying ourselves with our ego, we fall into this world's repetitive struggle of birth, discomfort, and death."

Shankara

Once Phil realizes that the solutions to our problems with the outside world never come from outside, he begins to gain access to his intuitive intelligence. Slowly, he recognizes that the answers must lie within himself, and in his own actions. With his surrender, he realizes that whatever he wants to accomplish, he can accomplish – if he's willing to lead a simply principled life, accept the position of being a humble beginner, to focus, and to simply do his best.  He learns how to play the piano, only for the joy of the effort, the joy of living musically, and the joy it brings to others.

"When you make the two into One, you will be a Son of Man; and when you say: Mountain, move!  It will move."

The Gospel of Thomas, 106

Then, intuitively, instinctively, he begins to help others. Every [eternal] day, the same people will need his help, and from his acceptance of humility comes the willingness to be of service, with no regard for reward. This is the transcendence of human potential – the movement away from self gratification, towards the welfare of others. This is the real impulse for spiritual evolution, for by taking these actions his transformation begins. He comes into alignment with the real nature of consciousness, which is the joy of being. He comes ever closer to everyone's goal – the realization of Love in our lives (as our lives).

"He who gives up action falls. He who gives up only the reward, rises."

Mahatma Gandhi, from Introduction to The Bhagavad Gita

As he loses himself in humility and service, he comes to recognize the eternal nature of his true self, everyone, and everything. He learns to live by the simple principles that always put the wind at our backs on the path to spiritual evolution, namely: Honesty, Humility, Compassion, Selfless Action, Generosity of Spirit, and Patience. Only then does he become truly effective. Only then can he begin to find the freedom to become his authentic self. Finally, when his life is devoted to the welfare of everyone he meets, he finds serenity, family, and Love. He becomes a real human being.

Oh it's funny–it's a very funny movie–but even though the film only lasts a couple hours, we never really know exactly how many days Phil lives over and over. Dozens, hundreds...millions? As is the case with all our fractal futures, we may never know how many times each single human life will have to be lived. How many times we'll have to ride this cycle of creation and destruction, out, and back, on our way to finding our true potential. Like Phil, we can all wake up everyday, trapped in the dark prison of our selves; or, we can wake up and see the light in everyone and everything.    

Everyday when we wake up, we either choose to see our shadow, or we don't.



Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

Groundhog Day: Doing it Over and Over, Until We Get it Right

In the great Harold Ramis film, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a self-centered, materialistic egomaniac who must relive a single day over and over until he finally learns how to do it right. Sound familiar? He (like all of us) must pass through one difficult doorway after another on our path of spiritual evolution, often kicking and screaming all the way.

The doors he's forced through in the course of his eternal day are generally  forms of surrender and action: realization of powerlessness (the piercing of denial);  the destruction of the egoic self, and detachment from attraction of the sensory self (the "dark night of the soul"); service without expectation for rewards, and the realization of true humility (absolute acceptance and tolerance); then the recognition of the eternal in everyone and everything (enlightenment). After passing through these spiritual stages, he finds Love.

In the film our anti-hero Phil is forced to confront the inconvenient truth that the world doesn't revolve around each of us. Becoming aware that I am personally not all that important or powerful is tough, especially when I matter so very much to myself... Doesn't that person on the subway know that I'm trying to get somewhere? Why can't that fellow employee see that my plan is superior? And just why don't I get what I logically deserve (when less deserving people do)? Of course I am getting just that, all the time.

Each day, Phil repeats the same aggravating mistakes, failing to recognize the patterns imposed on him by his self-centeredness. His rudeness, his arrogance, his impulsiveness, his entitlement. (Unfortunately, that sounds familiar too.)

"The mind deludes him, binding him with the bonds of the body, the sensory self, and the ego. It creates in him the sense of "I" and "mine." It makes him wander endlessly among the fruits of the actions it has caused."

Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination

Phil has to come to terms with the harsh truth that he's subject to the same world that all of us must endure, and hopefully transcend. (Don't they know who I think I am?) The failure to find any relief in sensory gratification, and the shattering of his egoic self-importance finally leads him to despair, helplessness, and a profound depression that results in a spree of suicidal self-destruction...but still he wakes up to this life again.

"The ego's intelligence is only a pale reflection of pure consciousness that robs us of our true nature of joy. By identifying ourselves with our ego, we fall into this world's repetitive struggle of birth, discomfort, and death."

Shankara

Once Phil realizes that there's no escape from the difficulties of this world available from outside of ourselves, he begins to gain access to his intuitive intelligence, recognizing that the answers really lie in his own actions. First, he finds that whatever he wants to accomplish, he can accomplish, if he's willing to lead a simply principled life, accept the position of being a humble beginner, focus, and do his best.  He learns how to play the piano, only for the joy of the effort, the joy of living musically, and the joy it brings to others.

"When you make the two into One, you will be a Son of Man; and when you say: Mountain, move!  It will move."

The Gospel of Thomas, 106

Then, intuitively, instinctively he begins to help others. Every [eternal] day, the same people (everybody) need his help, and from his acceptance of humility comes the willingness to be of service, with no regard for reward. This is the transcendence of human potential. This is the real impulse for spiritual evolution, for by taking these actions, his great transformation begins as he comes into alignment with the real nature of consciousness, which is the joy of being. He comes ever closer to everyone's goal – the realization of Love in our lives (as our lives).

"He who gives up action falls. He who gives up only the reward, rises."

Mahatma Gandhi, from Introduction to The Bhagavad Gita

As he loses himself in humility and service, he comes to recognize the eternal nature of his true self – everyone, and everything. He learns to live by the simple principles that always put the wind at our backs on the path to spiritual evolution, namely: Honesty, Humility, Compassion, Activity, Generosity of Spirit, and Patience. Only then can he become truly effective, he truly contributes, he finds serenity, family, and Love.

It's funny (it's a very funny movie), but even though the film only lasts a couple hours, we never know exactly how many days Phil lives over and over – dozens, hundreds, millions? As is the case with all our fractal futures, we may never know how many times this single organism we call humanity has lived, and will live this cycle of creation and destruction out on our way to finding our true potential; but like Phil, we all can "make the road home, be home."     

Everyday when we wake up, we either see our shadow, or we don't.