Our Collective Conscious (part 2)

Upstairs, alone, no, not alone . . . here comes the dog, Rumi, and the cat, Katie. Always anxious to share an experience, Rumi comes to give kisses and then lie at my feet. Katie comes to make sure she’s not missing any of the action, and will eventually lie down in my lap.

I was writing about my life-changing experience. I’ve always been interested in how what I do can impact/support the bigger picture. That is why I focus on changing myself, and I am not so interested in news or politics. But my perspective has changed to see that it is that bigger picture that is important—and is what I am changing for. But wait, this is more than just a change in perspective.

I’ve experienced a Moment before—a moment where I was “caught up into the Heavens” and, keeping my Oneness, my unique individual identity, I experienced being a Wholeness, One with every other thing—a moment of Nirvana. But that was Me as a particle, in the midst of other particles making up the Light.

The change that I’m talking about is not a Moment, but a Being. Suddenly, I was not a point, a particle, a One, I was a wave, a beingness that was the Light—and the flow encompassed past, present and future. In that being, histories flashed before me, and I felt so much bigger than before, and I was exhausted by it all. In knowing that I’m bigger I have to act on that. I can no longer condone my separateness or my fear. I can no longer deny myself access to power since it is a bigger beingness in me that I can no longer refuse.

This Consciousness of Being is not a phenomenon unique to me. It is a Collective Conscious that I believe has evolved as we have worked to uncover our Collective Unconscious. Our cultural archetypes seem to reveal the gamut of our successes and failures as a species. According to Will and Ariel Durant’s "The Lessons of History", history is the only true philosophy, showing the limitations of man. Man may change his habits, but not his instincts, thus seemingly to become doomed to face the endless repetition of mistakes and successes, downfalls or triumphs as seen in the recurring rise and fall of civilizations throughout history.

However, the Durants go on to say that civilization promotes cultural creativity, the basis upon which arts, morals and laws grow. It is here that evolution finds its building blocks. As the species that have as our uniqueness achieved an “awareness” of the universe around us, we are not swept into the evolutionary stream of consciousness by our instinct or individuality alone. We have a “God-consciousness”, an “I Am” that mirrors not the individual “I” that we often mistake it for, but the “One” that can evolve into or encompasses the Whole.

The Durants would support this by agreeing that the basis of wisdom, which is required to balance order and freedom within society, is our religious beliefs, morals and character developed to overcome instincts through socialization, thus developing civilization. Thus the relationship between wisdom and civilization has played out in a spiral form since Cain and Abel sacrificed their burnt offering.

This is an evolutionary, albeit a cultural change, that was first uncovered in the writings of Jung and others as the Collective Unconscious. Now, we are beginning to see this stream of unconsciousness gradually emerging into deliberate, conscious, specific acts of selflessness, as well as politically, environmentally, and financially aware decisions made by society as a whole.

These are not my, or even your, values being played out, although our individual moments of awe and wonder make it possible for us to conceive of a Collective Conscious that reinvents the human and lifts us into a higher spiritual development and the promise of a bright future.

As our hope for the future has increased over the last few decades with such leaders and visionaries as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Rachel Carson, Desmond Tutu and E.F. Schumacher to name a handful, we have come to realize that change within the religious, financial, environmental or political realms only comes when we recognize humankind as family and family as universal.

On Evolution and Our Collective Conscious

Did you ever have a day where you changed so much that you knew that you would never be the same again? A day where you could never return to your old way of life, to your old way of looking at yourself? Today was such a day for me.

It was an ordinary day, as far a Christmases go. We did the ordinary things one does on Christmas. My husband and I had a leisurely breakfast as we waited for our daughter and son-in-law to come from his family’s home. Their tradition is to gather on Christmas Eve in front of the fire. Ours is to share Christmas morning, so we work well together.

I didn’t change externally. I made the Christmas dinner—chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and feta cheese, garlic mashed potatoes and broccoli with my specialty spinach and cranberry salad on the side. After dinner, I lost the “Worst Case Scenario” Survival game we played together, but my husband won, and since he rarely wins or plays any of our games everyone was happy for him.

We spent time together figuring out how to use some of our gifts. I got the photo key ring I had my eye on for years. I gave my husband a portable battery car charger/tire inflator. He discovered you can also plug your coffee pot into it in case of a blackout! Ben and Kjersti had fun trying to figure out how to connect a dance program to the TV.

Later on the kids went out to see a movie, my husband fell asleep watching a James Bond movie, and I came upstairs to reflect on the past few days. I had just come back from the second week of my Healing class. In this first year the focus is on discovering/uncovering the self. No matter how much I know about me, there’s always more to be revealed.

I’ve spent a large portion of my life trying to discover my self, my purpose, my direction, my offering. My questioning has always been to be shown my gifts and how they can be used for the sake of a higher purpose. That changed when our daughter got married and I asked instead, what do I need to do for me in order to do those big things.

Since then it has been a roller coaster ride of feelings, expansions and contractions, some gentle, some not. Trying to get in touch with my power has been a recurring theme. Finally I sat down with a paper and pencil and said, “Ok, show me what my power looks like.” I drew a strongly spinning force in the middle of the page with definite roots connecting to the Earth, two large spinning forces on my right and left, and energy flowing down from above. I wrote: supported from above, from ancestors/ spirits/ guides, from the Earth.

On the next page I drew a picture of my fear: one dot, alone. I looked from one page to the next. It made no sense. My power was in all the support I knew/felt I had, my fear in not having that support, of being/feeling alone. The dichotomy was too obvious for me to ignore or to fool myself any longer. Time to step into my power.

But this wasn’t what changed my life. It was a big step, but one that has been coming for a while. No, I was still baking when I had another revelation during the writing of my Wisdom University paper. We had to discuss our understanding of the relationship between wisdom and civilization. I began by writing that it is our time to let the power of a mother’s love shine through us. When we are aware, we see it everywhere. Our power does not have to be centered on arrogance, dominance, or possessiveness. Our inheritance is a consciousness of relationship that can be seen and remembered in a mother’s love.

This mother’s protection, which has followed us through the rise and fall of greater and longer lasting civilizations than the American Empire, is about to push us out of the nest to see if we truly are able to fly. At this moment, my interior journey came to have no meaning. What is amazing about our species, Homo sapiens, is that our unique self—rife with values and self-enlightenment, is on an even keel with other species in that we are unable to enter a New Age individually. We must enter as a species, or not at all.

This is our key to understanding the relationship between wisdom and civilization. We may individually glimpse higher states of consciousness, find moments of extraordinary insight and discover the unlimited potential of the human being. However, how often do we hold on to these moments in ordinary society, or even within the familiarity of our family life—and make it matter?

But wait! This still was all churning within me the night before Christmas as I barely made the deadline for writing my paper. Stay tuned for Part 2 to watch the drama unfold further as I sat in the attic after the hustle and bustle of Christmas contemplating the reality of evolution and our Collective Conscious.