Predators

If thoughts create our world, whose thoughts make predators kill? You cannot say that the young zebra has brought about its own demise in the jaws of a pride of lions, through its thoughts. Well, I suppose you can say it, but the idea doesn't quite stick! So whose thoughts are causing the violent death and suffering of billions of animals preyed upon by others?

Could it be our thoughts, collectively?

When we truly shift, enough of us, will the predatory system change? Will there be a new way to receive and give energy, not involving one creature devouring another? Could it, in effect, cause an evolutionary leap for all Earth's creatures, not just us humans? Might we, at some point, indeed have the lion lying down with the lamb - in gentle companionship? Because we think only thoughts of peace? Because we are peace.

Wouldn't that be cool? What do you think?

Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow

I would love to look into the eye of a whale.  In the wild seas.  Unafraid.

What mystery there?  What depth of wordless thinking?

Given that they cannot hug or speak, I'm certain they use other ways to connect.  I'm certain that they feel connected in spite of their seeming aloneness.  Inseparable from each other.  Inseparable from the ocean.

We do not know, but we can imagine.  It is gross arrogance to assume that other creatures are lesser, that they are biological automatons, without any Knowing.

http://www.wdcs.org.uk/

I would love to gaze, long and open, into the eye of a whale.  To see its being.  To understand its essence.  And to allow that eye to see me.  Allow that eye to reflect me back to me, filtered by the whale's dream.

Would I like to look into the eye of an orca?  Sea-wolf; huntress?  See the bloodlust, the thrill of the kill?  Not so much.  For I fear to awaken those urges in me.

We have the power to imagine anything.  To call up and create anything.  We are conjurers, magicians, mini-gods creating.

Let's not be small.  Let's be towering in our creative benevolence.  Let's put it all right, because we have the capacity to imagine it put right.  To imagine it all good.

Where first we imagine, the planners follow, then the builders, then everyone can come to inhabit these new places.

That's how a new world is made.

"...The infinite intelligence within you knows the answers.
Its nature is to respond to your thoughts…"



You gravitate to that which you secretly love most
You meet in life the exact reproduction of your own thoughts
There is no chance, coincidence or accident
In a world ruled by law and divine order
You rise as high as your dominant aspiration
You descend to the level of your lowest concept of your self
Free your mind and your ass will follow
The infinite intelligence within you knows the answers
Its nature is to respond to your thoughts
Be careful of the thought-seeds you plant in the garden of your mind
For seeds grow after their kind

Dr Funkenstein / Funkadelic

Conscious Evolution and Evolutionary Spirituality

This is the spiritual concept that most captures my enthusiasm. So what is it?

I have this impulse inside me that drives me to seek more out of life, particularly to find a way to give more. To give something of meaning to the planet, to humanity. To do something for the greater good.

Where does that impulse come from? I know I'm not the only one feeling it. Not everyone is feeling it, but many, many people are feeling it. And often it begins as a dissatisfaction with the way life is turning out. A questioning. Is this really all there is? Is this really as good as it gets?

The universe began from a single, unimaginably tiny, point. Something caused that point to expand, and keep expanding. Something set in motion a process that drove the tiny particles from that initial explosion to form the simplest atoms. They coalesced into suns which produced enough energy to form heavier atoms, more explosions, a new generation of suns, planets, and all the space debris we're now familiar with. And no doubt, plenty we don't yet know.

Something caused our planet to generate life. And that life, over billions of years, increased in complexity until there was an astonishing array of life-forms interwoven together, constantly developing, constantly changing. That "something" can be called the evolutionary impulse, an impulse towards ever greater complexity.

So now we come along. Humanity. Very recently, in history-of-the-universe terms, as we are so often hearing. But my, how quickly we have grown! We became self-conscious. We became thinkers. Problem-solvers. Innovators. Masters of our environment. Conquerors. Amazing, wonderful, inventive. Can we say, the most successful species on the planet? We are, after all, everywhere (as that fantastic TV series Human Planet beautifully illustrates).

But of course, it's not all good. We're polluting our environment. We're killing, torturing and enslaving our own kind. We're destroying habitats at an unsustainable rate. Something is very off-course. We all know it. But we're not sure that there's anything we can do about it.

Well, yes there is. We can evolve. The big damage has happened, mainly, in the last couple of hundred years. Which is also the time that we've been coming to terms with the concept of evolution, rather than a sudden, complete creation. Many people have come to accept that this evolution has been taking place. They've let go of the classic beliefs, that all is either static or cyclical. Things change, states the new paradigm, endlessly.

Even the pace of change, changes.

Now, we are becoming conscious of the evolutionary process within us, not just across those eons past, but within an individual, in one lifetime, right now. Humanity has not stopped evolving. Even human nature itself is evolving. There is a long way for us to go. In fact, we are only just beginning, and we cannot fathom where we will be in a few more centuries.

We are the universe becoming conscious of itself. We are the consciousness of the evolutionary impulse, embodied. We are its physical form.

Barbara Marx Hubbard believes we are birthing a new species of human, dubbed Homo universalis (sometimes Homo progressivus or Homo noeticus), who will have a very different orientation to Homo sapiens.

The new universal human will be in touch with the evolutionary impulse inside them, tapping into that divine source of love, joy, wisdom and inspiration, at will. They will be motivated by the impulse within to find meaningful "work" which contributes to the greater good, while providing a safe and self-nurturing platform to perform that work from. Relationships will be the coming together of people already fulfilled and happy, who are not seeking fulfilment and love FROM each other, but who are bringing those gifts TO each other.

Understanding that is a major key. To have the best, happiest, liberating, committed relationships, we do not demand love or happiness from each other. We unlock the love and joy that is available to each and every one of us INSIDE, thereby automatically bringing love and happiness to our partners, family and friends. We become love. We are joy.

Reading books is a great way to increase understanding but it is very important to activate your heart and not just your mind when grappling with these ideas. Read with an open mind and an open heart.  For a good grounding in the concepts you can't beat:

Conscious Evolution (UK)
Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential

Conscious Evolution (US)
Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential

and for my personal evolution, I'm well into and thoroughly enjoying:

Love for No Reason (UK)
Love For No Reason: 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love

Love for No Reason (US)
Love For No Reason: 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love

Listening, I find, is even better, because you can hear so much more in a voice, the nuances convey so many extra clues, and you can feel like you are part of a group of like-minded seekers. Anything where Barbara Marx Hubbard speaks is well worth listening to. Another favourite is Jean Houston, she is awesome. Craig Hamilton is very much into exploring the conscious evolution concept and two others I've enjoyed listening to recently are James O'Dea and Terry Patten. And another favourite is Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief).

The whole audio series led by Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas, called Women on the Edge of Evolution, is well worth exploring.

And all these audio series are available to download for free - hundreds of hours of stimulating, heart-expanding, mind-broadening conversations between people who are doing extraordinary good in the world.

So, why not dive in and let your evolutionary impulse guide you to just one, to listen to today? I guarantee there'll be at least one lovely "aha!" moment just for you.

LINKS TO FREE AUDIO SERIES:

The Shift In Action

The Shift Network

The Great Integral Awakening

Women on the Edge of Evolution

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Past and Future Me's

Ferreting through my box of old writings today (such a lovely rainy-Sunday activity) I unearthed this. I must have written it twenty-five years ago, as I refer to 'my children' as if I might have some - I never did. I remember even as a teenager having this strong feeling of connection with future "me's", that my life was all happening all at once, but I forgot it in my thirties, to be re-awakened to it in my mid-forties. It was partly this reconnection between past and future "me's" that helped to heal me of my depression. I have a "family of me's" all ready to support each other.

I'm glad I kept everything I ever wrote. Ink is more durable than memory.


Now I know what Sam Clements meant. [Who? Did I mean Samuel Clemens - Mark Twain? If I did, I can only have read a little of his stuff - he put forward so many viewpoints across his life.] Everything is ordained, he insisted, mapped out, planned; our lives stretching before us as well as behind; the book has been written, read, and closed long before we take our first breath.


Sometimes it can seem so. But still, I have the choice to lay down my pen and walk out of the room, I could scream, put out my cigarette, cry for lost lovers - I don't, but I have the feeling that I could. Perhaps the feeling is just part of the detailed passage about my life, my thoughts.


Certainly it seems that we cannot choose who we love. We fall, always the word used, in love with this person or that - by chance? Or does some superpower, some force, some cosmic intelligence, cause a shift in the infrastructure of space and time which presents us with this person to love? Here she is, here he is. Here I am. I stand before you, it is ordained that you love me. You cannot resist. Indeed, trying to resist is only part of the play, written, edited and finalised long ago.


I am young, but I feel old. There is no difference. Age is a definition with no meaning. I am thirteen, twenty, thirty-two, sixty, all at once. I am unborn, I am dead. This moment is one viewpoint in my life, I remember all that has happened, from being born to dying. Lovers in succession, marching, trampling over me, trampling each other, feeling my hard boot on their faces. Yes, all is love and beauty, all is heartache, apathy, grey.


Yes, my children are all dead. Their children are dead. That is the only certainty. If ever they lived at all.


Who sees fit to control me in this way? What huge game is this? Why am I not aware of what is in store for me? Where is the cosmic library holding life-stories about each of us? Could I not read the passage about me, and thus relieve myself of painful decision-making, if the decision is already made?


I don't believe it! I can and will take control. I will rule me, no-one else can get near.


Why do I hear such a peal of cosmic laughter?

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Healthy Money

Money isn't real.  It's what I've always instinctively felt and have insisted for years.  And now I'm hearing it confirmed by unassailable sources.

Not only is money not real, but it's being used in a highly effective con which concentrates more and more money (power) in the hands of a few, effectively enslaving the rest of us.  This money system, built on scarcity, creates suffering and starvation.  How many times have we heard that we have the resources to feed everyone on the planet?  Why can't we?  Because if there's no profit in it, the current monetary paradigm won't allow it to happen.

Now, I believe that without the distortion of this monetary system, people would prove themselves to be fundamentally cooperative and collaborative, and the hungry would soon be fed.  And I'm delighted to say that there are great minds at work on just how we can move from this current, seemingly hopeless, pathological system into one where that will be possible.  Not only will it be possible, but people all around the world are already putting many of the new ideas into practice.  Just don't expect to hear about it from the conventional media.

A fantastic introduction to all this and an inspiration to us all is provided (yet again) from the fabulous Shift Network.  They are running a Healthy Money Summit and it has really got me excited.  If you want to know a bit more about how you can make a difference to your own life and how what you do can slot into the bigger picture, I really recommend this free audio series. 

In fact, I urge everyone to listen in to at least some of it.  This is about how we CAN make the changes, starting right now.

Jumping up and down in glee ...!