The biologist Ken Matsushima wrote this to me in an email, in response to mine. Gary In response to your blog post, Ken, where you wrote: 'Our entire history is full of movements, revolutions and rebellions, yet they always seem to lead to the same place....''Reform has a poor record in terms of solving the real problems that humans face....The only way to escape from this eternal dichotomy is to evolve beyond it. We need to open fresh eyes and see the road not taken . . . ALL of the roads not taken. What we need to seek out is not a new direction, but a new consciousness. One that recognizes that there are more than just two paths before us. In short, what the world needs is not revolution, but EVOlution.' Yes, yes. And where does it begin? How is it implemented? From the top down? From the roots up? This conversation needs also to move from well-formed thoughts to effective acts, but which acts? I feel the most effective will be when individuals have consistent, intensive experiences of themselves as co-creative beings who answer only to what I term 'the One Light,' and act from the most complete perspective. Ken Basically my perspective is that humans cannot continue as self-interested and competing individual selves. The biological program tells us that we are each separate rats in a rat-race ... a dog-eat-dog world where it is survival of the fittest. As biological programs go, this makes sense. But it also poses an existential threat to our current civilization. Because that program cannot function in a world that contains 7 billion humans. If I adopt the premise that I must grab whatever I can for myself, and not worry what harm it does to others, that makes one individual acting for my benefit and six billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine people who will trample all over me to benefit THEMselves. Nobody can cope with those odds. I have no way to guess how the evolutionary program will be rewritten. Perhaps we are merely cells in a Gaia organism, and eventually a greater consciousness will sort out the current "inflammation" that has broken out in the human organ. Perhaps humans will attain the sort of group awareness that bees and ants experience. Perhaps we wont change physically at all, but each individual will be able to fully realise the fact that they are One with all other individuals. Whatever happens, people need to start living their lives with the understanding that everyone else truly is our "brother". If I stop worrying about how to enrich and empower my little self, and start making an effort to help others in whatever way I can . . . . that makes one person who doesnt worry about acting in my interest, and six billion nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine people who make an effort to help me in whatever way they can. I like those odds a lot better. In the mean time, the only thing we can do is to work on ourselves. Holistic Consciousness has to start somewhere. It has to infect enough minds to reach a certain critical mass. Perhaps when enough people have tuned themselves in to The Word, or Tao or God or whatever you want to call it, that larger consciousness will be able to act through us, and maybe chart a course around the most gruesome of the challenges we will face over the coming century. Make no mistake, though -- we humans have already done a lot of damage, and the results of our excesses are bound to catch up with us. As they say -- Karma is a bitch. I guess that simply reinforces the fact that we need to work on our Selves, and (in the Biblical cliche) make ourselves "fit vessels" to contain Holistic Consciousness. "If a man therefore purge himself from all that is unfit and unworthy, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for Christ's use, and prepared to do every good work." Timothy 2:20 Marvel Ous Interesting perspective. I feel our self-interests are innate. We can't not be selfish. We are by nature of our humanity pursuing interests that are selfish from birth the death and that can never change because the human can only pursue a perspective of self, one that makes self comfortable and so that will always take precedence above all else as it should be. The perception here from Ken is very much based on one of duality, where there is a right and wrong way that we should conduct and have conducted our species. I appreciate this mindset but it is not one I hold dear any longer. Great read thank you Gary. <3 Kate Heicksen Marvel Ous I think you are mistaking Ken's position of, "this doesn't work anymore, this will kill us all if we continue, maybe this will work better" with a claim of moral duality of right and wrong. Also, notice that he didn't give up self interest. He talks about his own odds of being happy increasing with a change in dynamics. That is still self interest. This post isn't about right and wrong, it's about effective vs ineffective. He doesn't claim that our competitive biological nature is wrong, just outdated considering current and rising population statistics. The way we have done things in the past will not continue to work, we will destroy ourselves if we continue to be individualistic in this new densely populated world we are creating. Yes, we will always be self interested. However, it may be in all of our self interests to act for the common good. To see ourselves as a unified whole would change our perspective of what we identified as self, and therefore, self interest. Both are true perspectives. We are individuals yet also inescapably connected and therefore, One. So shifting from one perspective to the other isn't right or wrong, or true or false - it just might work better. And this idea of channeling "God's will" is about recognizing that we humans aren't so great at seeing the big picture, or seeing what's really best for us in the long run. We are short sided and have blinders on in terms of our own self interest. We just aren't all that wise and brilliant, we humans. And he recognizes that we can tap into a broader perspective that may better serve all of us, individually and en masse. There are creatures on this planet with massive populations who are succeeding. They do so because they have a sort of hive mind. Creatures who act individualisticly have much smaller populations. We have crossed a threshold where we must evolve or drastically reduce our numbers. Since, logically speaking if we were to drastically reduce our numbers then you and I might be among the culled, it might be more in our self interest to support the movement to hive mind. That is what I see, as the heart of his argument. Gary "Man's great universe adventure consists in the transit of his mortal mind from the stability of mechanical statics to the divinity of spiritual dynamics, and he achieves this transformation by the force and constancy of his own personality decisions, in each of life's situations declaring, 'It is my will that your will be done.'" ...The Urantia Book 118:8.11 This has special meaning to me, as this week I wrote a new self-guided visualization into the Present Moment Movements (a Qigong set) ~ which has a jewel as a metaphor. Here is an excerpt: '...Inhale the One Light, from the elixir field and the Eye of Ra, into the sphere around your heart. Feel the One Light filling that sphere. In your mind's eye, enter your heart space, and see a figure placing one of your heart wishes into your hands, in the form of a jewel. Notice the jewel, it's color and shape. 'Move the jewel to the hands on the area of your heart, then pull it out, move your cupped hands to your mouth, and breathe the One Light into your hands. Visualize with feeling, that the jewel absorbs the One Light and transforms as you breathe a focused stream of light energy into your hands. 'Open your hands, palms up, at the level of the heart, and see the beauty of the butterfly, as it flies. Notice the colors and shape of the butterfly, and smile with appreciation. Loosen and relax your body; and breathe smoothly and regularly.....'
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