Understanding: Mind, Consciousness, Thought

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Mind: All human beings share in being a part of, and connected to Mind, the universal Life energy and source of intelligence beyond the brain. Because of Mind, we share in an endless flow of wisdom—each of us equally capable of being wise.

Consciousness: All human beings share in the principle or fact of Consciousness. We experience life. We also experience life from different levels of consciousness—from truncated and fear-based, angry and insecure “levels” to grounded, secure, safe, wise and even enlightened states (Buddha Mind, Christ Consciousness, the “Father within,” the Kingdom of Heaven.) If humans lived even a little more often in this last state of mind, the impact on world peace, from a personal to a global level, would be significant.

The principle of Thought, as a universal function, guides humans either toward or away from non-violence, love and compassion. The existence of a personal thought system, or “ego”—which we see as simply being a sticky attachment to, or identification with thoughts—trips up our noble aspirations for peace. Yet we have found that teaching people about the neutral fact of Thought, and how it creates reality for each of us (rather than attempting to change “content”), allows people to shine the light of this principle on all their thinking. Levels of consciousness jump as people gain understanding about the formless source of all ideas, beliefs and opinions.

When humans understand that a thought is just a thought, just a creation from formless energy, the iron grip the ego can have on us begins to lessen. Lighter, gentler, more inspired feelings arising from impersonal, or universal thoughts create kind and selfless behaviors. We begin to realize we are so much more than our limited thoughts. So much more than we ever “thought”! While respecting our own and others’ traditions, cultures and preferences, we see beyond the forms that humans have created—and to the deeper truth of our common divinity, our shared existence in universal Mind, Consciousness and Thought … or in Life. From this vantage point, there is no reason to argue, to fight, to hurt another. When I hurt you, I diminish me.

So, our personal answer is to share with people these simple principles that govern their states of mind. Because, beneath it all, all humans are already wise, good, generous, kind and even enlightened. When the clouds of thought begin to part, they each take their unique and radiant place in being one in “six billion paths to peace."

What do YOU think?

Artwork:  Ronald D. Isom  Many thanks.

See also Sydney Banks, “The Missing Link: Reflections on Life and Philosophy” & other works.

http://www.centerforsustainablechange.org/principles.php

Evolution of the Interior Universe

All aspects of human civilization—language, art, aesthetics, technology, architecture, organizations, governments—depend upon essential human relationships for their evolution and expression.

Question: What is actually evolving?

Answer: The quality and quantity of relationships between people, assuming the form of shared meanings, agreements, relationships and groups of relationships. The cultural domain is inter-subjective, because it exists between subjects, yet is often not objectively identifiable. But the fact that these shared spaces of meaning are not objectively identifiable does not hinder us from experiencing them as being real. As such, the subjective world includes not only individual consciousness but the inter-subjective domain of relationships as well, making the interior universe much more substantial. These relationships are real, yet they exist in the internal universe.

What do YOU think?

For more: http://www.i-awake.net/2010/08/spiral-dynamics-introduction.html

What Unites Us is Greater than What Divides Us

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There is a phrase that I think is important, but is overused and well on its way to becoming a cliché and that is: “What unites us is greater than what divides us!”  President John F. Kennedy used it in his 1961 address to Canadian Parliament: “Geography has made us neighbors.  History has made us friends.  Economics has made us partners.  And necessity has made us allies.  Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.  What unites us is far greater than what divides us."

The current US President, Barack Obama also used the idea in his speech this past Martin Luther King Junior Day: “through times of great challenge and great change, we have remembered that fundamental American truth - that what unites us is always more powerful than what divides us.”

But the idea is not strictly American, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon has recently used it in two different speeches.  First, in April of 2009, in his address to the Alliance of Civilizations forum in Istanbul, “What unites is so powerful it could easily overcome what divides us.”  Next, in November of 2009 in his speech to the Summit of Religious and Secular Leaders on Climate Change in London, “We are united by the belief that what unites us as human beings is stronger than what divides us.”  

What is it that unites us all?  Is it greater than what divides us?  What do YOU think?

Artwork by Cindy Hesse.  Many thanks.

Consciousness, Ourselves and Our World

Various scientists and philosophers have given us myriad ideas of consciousness. Some see it as the result of our physical brain function.  Others explain consciousness as a non local essence of phenomenon.

Paul Valery: “The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow expressed in the inner structure of our intellect.”

James Jeans: “[T]he universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”

Albert Einstein: “It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things.... Knowledge cannot spring from experience alone, but only from a comparison of the inventions of the intellect with observed fact.”

As Augustine, Valery, Eddington, and Einstein have duly noted, every “something” that our consciousness may see and point to reflects the qualities of the consciousness that is pointing.

Dan Dennett has us looking at our own perceptions, and suggests that it is the observer of viewpoint that is consciousness:  http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/102

How do you explain consciousness? 

Artwork by F. Rassouli  Many thanks.

Morality as Harmonic Chord

"Love thy neighbor as thyself" or the golden rule, can be found with
slight variations throughout philosophy and religion, here are a few:

Judaism: “…thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”, Leviticus 19:18

Islam: “None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” Number 13 of Imam “Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths.”

Native American Spirituality: “All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.” Black Elk

Shinto: “The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form”

Confucianism: “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you” Analects 15:23

Why is this important? Why is morality essential to the fabric of our lives? It prescribes consistency and allows our actions to be in harmony with our desires. It provides an internal compass that we can use to navigate society. How we apply the golden rule, or how we are able to treat others the way we ourselves would like to be treated, tests our moral coherence.

What do YOU think?

Our Global Village as a Single Consciousness

The first person to popularize the concept of a global village and to consider its social effects, was Marshall McLuhan. His insights were revolutionary at the time, and fundamentally changed how everyone has thought about media, technology, and communications ever since. McLuhan chose the insightful phrase "global village" to highlight his observation that an electronic nervous system (the media) was rapidly integrating the planet -- events in one part of the world could be experienced from other parts in real-time.

Marshall McLuhan believed that the media is the message: change the media, change your mind. His idea that our medias are extensions of who we are, made us wonder, how does television, internet and cell phone technology change who I am? He believed that the extension of any one sense alters the other senses and changes our world. Our many technologies change many of our senses. How does that effect our lives?

McLuhan once remarked that the one thing a fish is not aware of is water. The water determines everything the fish does yet the fish is blissfully unaware. The point is that we are the fish and technology our water.

Concerning the new status of man in technological, and media-dominated society, he said: "If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?"

What do YOU think?

Understanding Acceptance and Resistance

In a world filled with war, crime, violence and anger, how do we act when confronted with it? It is easy enough to aspire to peace, but how can we actually live peacefully when the world presents otherwise? Is a peaceful action always the best response? If not, are war and violence in perfect order?

In words of the Hindu sage Vivekananda, two ways are left open to us--the way of the ignorant, who think that there is only one way to truth and that all the rest are wrong, and the way of the wise, who admit that, according to our mental constitution or the different planes of existence in which we are, duty and morality may vary. The important thing is to know that there are gradations of duty and of morality--that the duty of one state of life, in one set of circumstances, will not and cannot be that of another.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Sri Krishna calls Arjuna a hypocrite and a coward because of his refusal to fight. This is a great lesson for us all to learn, that in all matters the two extremes are alike. The extreme positive and the extreme negative are always similar.

The story tells us that one man does not resist because he is weak, lazy, and cannot, not because he will not; the other man knows that he can strike a fatal blow if he likes; yet he not only does not strike, but blesses his enemies. The one who from weakness resists not commits a sin, and as such cannot receive any benefit from the non-resistance; while the other would commit a sin by offering resistance.

When the vibrations of light are too slow, we do not see them, nor do we see them when they are too rapid. So with sound; when very low in pitch, we do not hear it; when very high, we do not hear it either. The difference between resistance and non-resistance is of like nature.

What do YOU think?

The Artist, The Art and YOU

What is the role of the artist in 2008? Is there one beyond personal expression? Is there a social role for an artist to play, and if he does, does it even matter to anyone other than to those to whom the artwork speaks? Or is art holographic in nature, bringing us to a different state of being each time we enter, and the artist's only role: creator?

The writer (Lolita) Vladimir Nabokov said, "A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual."

Fredrich Nietzsche felt that art had a broader value: "Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence."

Andy Warhol disrupted the common views of the role each artist should play in their art. With Warhol's Brillo there is absolutely no sign of the artist's hand or that this piece was even made by an artist. Since he uses different techniques than traditional artists, at times he may never touch the piece at all and it still will be credited to him. This is a complete turn around from what was once expected from the artist. Skill is no longer involved, it is much more about content, appearance, and processes. Now many artists, such as Chihuly and Oldenburg follow in the footsteps of Warhol, by acting as designer, and letting the actual making of their art work be the job of their hired contractors, laborers and apprentices.

Artist such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt are thought to have especially personal art because the "artist's hand" or brushstrokes are visible throughout their pieces, showing their inner emotions. This personal quality of is often said to be why their paintings sell at such high prices. The same can be said of Jackson Pollock's work.

There are those that believe the artist has a higher calling. Carl Jung believed, "Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being."

Joseph Campbell said, "The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul."

What do YOU think?

Artwork by Nancy Standlee Many thanks.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Do you find yourself speechless because the communication around you is edgy or hostile? Do you often think of things that could have been said afterward? How do you talk to others whose only concern is their own agenda?

Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg is founder and director of educational services for The Center for Nonviolent Communication, an international, non-profit organization, and has been developing his practices for compassionate communication since the 1960s. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) helps connect us with what is alive in ourselves and in others moment-to-moment, with what we or others could do to make life more wonderful, and with an awareness of what gets in the way of natural giving and receiving.

Whenever we become disconnected from our compassionate nature, whenever our hearts are not devoid of hatred in all of its forms, we have a tendency to act in ways that can cause pain for everyone in our lives, including ourselves.

Nonviolence, Dr. Rosenberg tells us, does not refer to the mere absence of physical harm. It is a way of life that takes its lead from a compassionate and connected heart, and can guide us toward a more complete and happy way of being. It is a practice rooted in understanding, in living honestly, and in acting empathically with all beings. It requires nonjudgmental observation, separating feeling from thought, assessing and meeting need, and making clear and concrete requests for action.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, "Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being."

What do YOU think?

Sharing a Laugh and a Smile

Some say laughter is the quickest way to change our mood or thinking. How often do you laugh? Can you laugh at yourself? Do you intentionally seek laughter to change your mood? Is laughter of value in your life, or just a natural reaction to stimuli?

Marshall Brain has studied laughter and tells us that the average adult laughs 17 times a day. When we laugh heartily, changes occur in many parts of the body, even the arm, leg and trunk muscles. Laughter seems to be produced via a circuit that runs through many regions of the brain. (This means that damage to any of these regions can impair one's sense of humor and response to humor, experts say.)

• The left side of the cortex (the layer of cells that covers the entire surface of the forebrain) analyzed the words and structure of the joke.
• The brain's large frontal lobe, which is involved in social emotional responses, became very active.
• The right hemisphere of the cortex carried out the intellectual analysis required to "get" the joke.
• Brainwave activity then spread to the sensory processing area of the occipital lobe (the area on the back of the head that contains the cells that process visual signals).
• Stimulation of the motor sections evoked physical responses to the joke.

Behavioral neurobiologist and pioneering laughter researcher Robert Provine believes that laughter is a decidedly social signal, not an egocentric expression of emotion. In the absence of stimulating media (television, radio or books), people are about 30 times more likely to laugh when they are in a social situation than when they are alone. Humor that creates laughter in these situations may be:

The incongruity theory suggests that humor arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together.

The relief theory - an actual story or situation creates tension within us. As we try to cope with two sets of emotions and thoughts, we need a release and laughter is the way of cleansing our system of the built-up tension and incongruity.

In some respects laughter may be a signal of dominance/submission or acceptance/rejection. Consider the distinction between laughing with and laughing at someone.

The superiority theory comes into play when we laugh at jokes that focus on someone else's mistakes, stupidity or misfortune.

A speaker, in other cases, may buffer an aggressive comment with laughter or deliver a remark using "laugh-speak," a consciously controlled hybrid of laughter and speech. In this sense laughter may modify the behavior of others by shaping the emotional tone of a conversation.

Laughter, in its highest form, can also be intentionally used to uplift the spirits of others, as in the case of clowns and comedians who visit hospitals and hospices to bring smiles to those in most need of them. In the Presence of Humor: A Guide to the Humorous Life by Cy Eberhart is a systematic and comprehensive guide, written to increase your ability to find and achieve the humorous life by activating your comic viewpoint. It's designed to help you realize the spiritual strengths that come from experiencing the humor present in your living.

What do YOU think?

Making the World a Better Place

Social responsibility is on the minds of many of us. How can we make the world a better place? Is this our duty, as Jean Paul Sarte and the existentialists believed? How can we fit our contribution to the greater community into our busy lives as we struggle with survival and self expression, daily?

Clare W. Graves, Ph.D, was a visionary thinker who began laying the groundwork for the theory behind the Spiral Dynamics application in the 1950s. His theory suggests that every individual or collective consciousness falls somewhere in, between, or among these various levels of being which are not types of people but ways of thinking about a thing.

Graves breaks it into one of nine groups called MEMEs, and assigns a color to each. Beige is the first, this group is involved solely in survival and would have no time to consider social responsibility. The green MEME has the greatest involvement in social issues, as their survival needs are met and their main concerns are harmony/love; joining together for mutual growth; awareness; belonging. The last MEMEs up the spiral, turquoise and coral, go beyond the physical social involvement and contribute to society in ways that involve consciousness more than doing. According to Graves, all groups contribute to life as we know it in valuable and significant ways. It is the dynamic between that creates the life spiral known as evolutionary consciousness.

Future By Design, an organization dedicated to reformulating the operation definition of a better world by introducing coherent planning strategies that are applicable to global and small groups alike, is a good example of green MEME work. Their credo: To constantly maximize existing and future technologies with the sole purpose of enhancing all human life and protecting the environment.

A good example of the work of the turquoise MEME is Dr. Bruce Lipton, the biophysicist who identified the two way communication of unique signals from our cell membranes into our experiential awareness.

An example of the coral MEME would be Neville Goddard, twentieth century mystic, who taught self realization through recognition: "The ideal you seek and hope to attain will not manifest itself, will not be realized by you, until you have imagined that you are already that ideal." We hold the space, imagine the world of our desire, and live from our awakened imagination. What do YOU think?

Time and the Transformation of Consciousness

Some people believe time is speeding up. For instance, time seems to be flying by faster than ever, or what used to take several years to accomplish now seems to be taking place in just a couple. You may have changed more in the past two years than you did in the five years before that. When more personal growth is crammed into a shorter amount of time, it appears that things have picked up pace and more ground is being covered more quickly.

In the 2012 paradigm, this idea serves to correlate the prophesied dissolution of time, or a change in our perception of time. Yes, there's more to it and the bottom line is the Mayan calendar is tracking the evolution of consciousness through nine sequentially ordered cycles of creation. The nine steps aren't linear which means you wouldn't lay them out end-to-end in a linear fashion. They are instead holographic in nature. All nine levels are nested into each other like a set of mixing bowls. That's how this calendar actually works. Each step up the nine leveled pyramid expands and develops the previous level with a 20 times faster frequency that continually drives evolution forward.

In his book The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, Carl Johan Calleman offers this idea: "The liberation of human beings from the negative effects of the frequency increase, such as stress, is a matter of entering the natural, nonphysical, divine flow of creation leading toward enlightenment. Today more than ever before, people are becoming aware of the stressful effects of subordinating their lives to physical time." What do YOU think?

A Time for Soul Searching

What, exactly, is our soul? What does it do, and how does it effect our daily lives? Christians think of the soul as that eternal part of ourselves that exists before we are born and lives on after we die. Eastern traditions see the soul as a vessel for karma, our identity, which forms each lifetime as we reincarnate. The Hermetic teachings maintain that through forgiveness, our karmic debt (formed by error and transgression) is released. Through forgiveness, the soul transcends the level of cause and effect and allows the soul to be directed by spirit. This is often achieved after a dark night of the soul, where soul and spirit are purified by facing, embracing and releasing all the good and evil within. What do YOU think?

Together We Create a Planetary Smile

Since 1998, Princeton researchers have been collecting data on internet activity and its relation to global events in an effort to demonstrate that across the world, humanity is connected and evolving together. Complete information of the project can be seen at http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others who have been collecting data from a global network of random event generators. The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years. The data are transmitted over the internet to a server in Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis which is expected to show anomalous deviations associated with Global Events when there is widespread participation or reaction to the event, and we can expect large-scale coherence and resonance.

The purpose is to examine subtle correlations that reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. We have learned that when millions of us share intentions and emotions the GCP/EGG network shows correlations. We are driven by that evidence to infer that something like a "consciousness field" exists, and that intentions or emotional states which structure the field are conveyed as information that is absorbed into the distribution of output values of labile physical systems. We can interpret this as evidence for participation in a growing global consciousness. Our thoughts and feeling can make a difference. It suggests we have the capability and responsibility for conscious evolution. We make the world we live in, and if we Do No Harm, we can help create a Planetary Smile. What would it be like to gradually recruit pretty much every person on the planet to join in a planet-wide smile? I can imagine the Earth herself would feel that, and it is easy to imagine that we all might be changed just a little, for the better, by such a shared experience.

The category of events that have that have the greatest effect on global consciousness are: celebration; spiritual event; terrorist attack. One interesting analysis showed that terrorizing and/or Partisan events that evoke openness or concern have the same kind of impact, as do meditations and catastrophes. In other words, events that seem to be the opposite in value, can have an equal impact on the consciousness field. Our participation is important, all of it.

What do YOU think?

Global Consciousness

Most of us can feel the interconnectedness of life to some degree. To be sure, we all possess varying degrees of awareness of the "soul of humanity." How do you feel this connection and how does it effect your life?

I believe that each of our souls evolves, and every group that we participate in forms an evolving soul that together, comprise the soul of humanity. As we are involved and evolve, so does the soul of humanity.

Rudolph Steiner suggested that both East and West traditions expressed something along the same lines: "To Arjuna, Krishna says 'Thou must be so and so, thou must do this or that, then wilt thou rise stage by stage in thy soul-life.' To his Corinthians St. Paul says: 'One of you has this gift, another that, a third another; and if these work harmoniously together, as do the members of the human body, the result is spiritually a whole which can spiritually be permeated with the Christ.'...What the soul is to become, the destiny of the soul, how throughout the whole evolution of mankind it evolves in manifold ways, concerning all this St. Paul gives us quite definite and profound conclusions." What do YOU think?