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.