Meditation
How shall we know world peace? How will it come when it does? Do you have faith enough to believe that humanity will survive our worst fears? Do you believe that we will survive this age? Think. Do you believe world peace will eventually come? If you do, how might it happen? If we were to use our imagination to write a story about the peace of this planet what would be our storytelling device? How does corruption become unprofitable? Because it will, you know. How do the refugees find a safe haven? Because someday they will, you know. How does hunger end? How does pollution end? How does the world step off the self-destruct button? Because it will, you know. We will know peace someday. We give thanks and honor to that future age. Namasté.
Message: 500 Years
Do I have your attention? Because this is going to be a journey. Let’s peel this back like an onion.
On what levels are we aware of things? What do we consider consciousness? We know about our conscious level. The ‘hi how are ya’ level. The things we perceive through our physical senses and conscious intellect. What we are most of us comfortable calling “reality.” We are also aware of our subconscious level, although we only indirectly experience it. We then see the autonomic level, our heartbeat, our breathing, our digestion, things that operate entirely on their own, but upon which we can also make a deliberate, conscious impact. We can hold our breath or make our heart race by a thought alone. And breathe.
We know that within us there are systems beneath systems which operate together and give us the freedom to animate our bodies. We each have an entire digestive community of trillions living within us. Two sets of species, humanoid mammal and its digestive microorganisms, have co-evolved together over millions of years. Our gut biome alone is a cosmos unto itself. A literal Whoville of gigantuous proportions. Does no consciousness exist at this level? Because that’s really the question. Is our concept of consciousness so rigid that there is no room to imagine it? Are we being too arrogant? We see that things are connected but are left to imagine what binds them. What’s holding all the tuna together in this sandwich anyway?
And then what of the levels we might spiritually categorize as energetic? That feeling we get when we know someone. That spark of recognition, awareness. Or how we feel when we go for a walk in the woods? Think about that feeling for a moment. The freshness of the air, the particular noisy quiet. The green. The scent. More importantly, the way it makes us feel. What is there on that level that we simply aren’t yet seeing? Science has no instruments for it yet. But we suspect that one day there is something here to be seen. Perhaps it’s quantum fields. What might exist between humans and trees about which only our eyes are deceiving us? Will we find consciousness there too? When fields overlap there is always a response. What fields are overlapping from which we often feel the effects but have no idea their origins? There is more to us than us. Let the implications of that sink in. There is more to us than us.
And if there is more to us than we can perceive, on which layers of our total consciousness do we really make our decisions? Is there a place among the strata of our various levels of consciousness where most of the work is done? Now go deeper. On what level do we make the majority of our decisions as a society? Is it on the committee level in conference rooms? Or do we work together on other levels of consciousness? On what levels are we really, really planning for the future of humanity? Because when we look at history, we see plenty of correlations between what we need and what has been prepared for us, both synergistically arriving together on time. We see major world inventions being thought of at the same time in multiple places across the globe simultaneously. The telephone and the airplane among them.
Trees in ancient forests communicate with each other. They share nutrients among themselves, swapping them back and forth according to seasonal need or infestations, even across species. They communicate and share resources with each other through the layer of fungi beneath them. This is proven. A vast network of fungi throughout the entire forest floor connecting every living thing above it. Do the trees know about the fungi or do they simply make unwitting, symbiotic use of it? Does the fungi know of its purpose? Not just to the trees but the entire planet? It could be argued that this system is a fractal model of consciousness. Or perhaps it actually is consciousness. Out of view, but omnipresent. Thinking of it this way, just what is the interdependent web of all existence? What layer is that on? What is the fungi layer beneath the surface of our perceived reality and what is accomplished upon it?
Do we know each other beneath the surface? Do we collaborate with each other behind the scenes? Are we like actors in a play having a friendly conversation backstage while we are pretending to kill one another for the audience? Upon what level does the majority of our consciousness exist and operate? I want to know. Because it doesn’t feel like I consciously know as much as I subconsciously know. But if what I consciously think is reality is actually only the tip of the iceberg; if there is more to me than me, I can let go. I can leave a lot of it for the rest of me to deal with. The part that probably has more information. Why should I try to lift the world with only my pinky? It’s enough to consciously decide that I will do my part to enlighten the world and then assume that all of me—especially the parts about which I know nothing—are on task, 27/7 toward my soul’s intent.
Is this God? Is this behind the scenes collaborative network what we’ve been calling God? Have we been naming the interdependent web of all existence, the layer upon which the likely vast majority of our consciousness operates and works in our favor, as God? Not some separate and forbidden apple on a tree, but the fully pervasive layer beneath it all? Is the argument between theism and atheism ultimately about the choice of words we use to describe the same thing? Our deepest unity? Probably not. But I bet it’s part of it.
If we are collaborating behind the scenes, what about? When we ask for change on the thermostat, what action is taken in the boiler? It becomes a vast chemical collaboration resulting in your warm bum, and your empty wallet. Because there is always a give and take. We like to be warm but we still have to pay the bill. We ask for change, while knowing change is an absolutely terrifying process. Have a look at the top ten list of stressors and they’re all about change. Moving, divorcing, finding out about Santa. Humanity would never consciously ask for such upheaval. Not consciously.
But what if the conscious level is not where the majority of the decision-making is done about HOW to accomplish that change we are asking for on the surface? The thermostat is not part of the chemical process, nor the engineering of the water heater. But it sets them into motion by its intent to warm. It ignites a process begun long before the thermostat even knew it wanted to change.
When we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and proved to ourselves that we could finally build the ultimate weapon, the red button was born. Humanity changed that very moment. My parents grew up hiding under their school desks to prepare for an atomic blast from which their desks could never protect them. It was from the hearts of those who hid under their desks in the 50’s that the peace movement was born. When we asked for peace in the 60’s what system, what greater system, was set into motion? Or, might have already been co-occurring all along and we simply moved into alignment with it? What did we plug ourselves into when we started to insist that We will get along. We will have peace. We will do whatever it takes for peace. We will get to know one another. We will buy the world a coke.
We know what happened on the surface. We know that as the atomic age was followed by the peace movement we decided to radically get to know one another in that moment. And now we have the Information Age. The Age of Emergence. When did that begin? The first email was sent in 1969. But the systems required for that to happen had been co-evolving with humanity beginning in the early 50’s. Less than a decade after the atomic bombs were dropped the process toward our eventual peace had already begun. A process we are still in today and will continue for some time. But notice that without our conscious awareness, the tools we would need to get to know one another grew up alongside us. If world powers had any idea what humanity would do with the world wide web they would have kept it to themselves. But we have it now. We know we are not alone now. And it’s only a matter of time before we complete this uncomfortable expansion we are suffering under to emerge better than before.
When we prophecy, into what are we dipping for our information? Into what network are we peeking? Are we purposefully changing ourselves from behind the scenes? Are we whispering into our own ears? Is what we call prophecy merely an awareness, on the most subconscious of levels, the backstage conversations we have been having all along? Everything from the Mayan calendar to Nostradamus to the Broadway musical Hair has told us this will be a time of great shift.
This is the question we ask ourselves as we reach a pretty big anniversary of the last time history suddenly expanded in this way. Symbolized in Christianity by the day Martin Luther publicly shamed the Catholic Church for selling real estate in Heaven exactly 500 years ago next Tuesday. A day we now celebrate, for even democracy itself has ultimately developed from that great moment civilization realized that authority is questionable. But the Renaissance was already underway. Carving a new awareness in the human mind. Cultivating it, preparing it, readying it for the moment when a new idea would be introduced. All the tools needed to expand and express ourselves were already being developed, namely the printing press. Luther didn’t invent the Renaissance. It had been brewing behind the scenes getting ready for him and others like him who would change the world with it.
Every 500 years or so, humanity gets a little bombshell dropped on it. An historian will tell you better. But I can say that 2500 years ago the Buddha was born, ushering in the concept of a deeper relationship with the peaceful self. Next was the birth of Jesus, with a relational practice for humanity. Tools to help save us from ourselves. Then, five more centuries later, as the Roman Empire fell and humanity was emerging from the dark ages Muhammad was born bringing with him a message of relationship with God. 500 years later the Church split into eastern and western traditions sending shockwaves throughout the world over which humans hold supreme religious authority. Fast forward 500 more years to the Renaissance and Martin Luther and the Reformation. And now today we are in an age referred to as the Great Emergence. Where does that cycle come from?
How much of us is out of view? How much of us, what percentage of each of us as individuals understands exactly what’s going on here? Is it more than the part of us which doesn’t understand? Because that’s the only part I have to work with. How do I use my intellect to make use of or take comfort from a system I don’t understand? That’s the ultimate consideration of faith. We can’t see the fungi layer.
If there truly is more to us than us, what can we do but try to take some measure of comfort from it. What can we do but act as instruments of peace? What is our responsibility to the world?
Let us pray.
Great source of all that is, thank you for the cycles of expansion and growth. Bring us a measure of comfort now as the world rearranges itself once more. Give us hope that the upheaval we see is part of a larger process toward peace. And grant us courage fed by a deep, intuitive awareness that all truly shall be well.
Repeat after me if you will:
May I find peace within myself.
May I see the patterns of the universe and take heart.
May I be an instrument of peace.
May I be a comfort to this brand new age.
And in the name of love we say, Amen.
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