When We End Toxic Divisiveness

      Some foods we consider nutritious & essential for health & even survival; some safe but not essential; some edible but only in small doses; and then some poisonous & to be avoided at all cost. Except for severe allergies, nobody thinks another person's favorite food is toxic.
     But when it comes to self-concepts & worldviews, one person's vision of perfection is another's road to hell! In fact our identification with ideas about who we are & what we (think we) believe can be so extreme that millions of people have been, and continue to be massacred because of it. And "it" is nothing more than sticky conditioned thought patterns in one group of people, aimed against the demonized "other" group of people.
     Toxic divisiveness is killing us, destroying the earth & poisoning civilized collaboration.
     Though the process feels agonizingly slow, our human race, as a WHOLE, is EVOLVING out of hostile self-centeredness, and into unconditional love for all.

     “The Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin claimed that love exists on the fundamental levels of life. Some might think this idea absurd and ask, do quarks fall in love? Teilhard was pointing to the fact that the characteristics of human love such as attraction, irresistibility and union, can be found on the most fundamental levels of physical life. Love is a passionate force at the heart of the universe, according to Teilhard, a core energy of cosmic life, a unitive principle and a cosmological force. He wrote, ‘love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.’ By declaring love a cosmological force, Teilhard indicated that love is an energy ‘present from the Big Bang onwards, though indistinguishable from molecular forces.’ In his poem ‘The Eternal Feminine,’ he speaks of cosmic love in the voice of wisdom:

      'I am embedded in the force field that is driving the cosmos towards greater novelty, towards greater integrity, and eventually towards greater consciousness. From within the fragments of matter, I encourage all possible combinations since I know that not every combination will be productive. I am the principle of union, the soul of the world. I am the magnetic and unitive force that brings the disparate matter together and urges each newly created form to multiply, to beautify, and to bear fruit. I nurture and release spirit from among the crude and complex elements. Each step towards union moves my creation towards greater spontaneity and freedom.’

     This irresistible energy of love, present in the universe, led Teilhard to claim that ‘the physical structure of the universe is love.’ The universe is created not only by the interaction of space-time-matter; it is created from the ubiquitous energy of love embedded in the fabric of the universe. All levels of life are governed by principles of attraction and union. Love is a cosmic force before it is a human one.”
     Ilia Delio. “The Primacy of Love.” Fortress Press, 2022.

    Imagine what we will accomplish when we become less self-centered - personally & tribally!

     FAR TOO MANY OF US, FOR FAR TOO LONG have had to “not only get our bearings, but (felt compelled to) know all the details of the world before we ventured out into it.”           Jack Henry Abbott

 

    WE ARE BEGINNING to grasp 'big picture' ideas, nourish them into reality, "BOLDLY going where no human has gone before!"

 
     “To deal with our existential crises, we need to base our disagreements on the same facts, burst out of our bubbles of tribalism, and see our essential unity. We need a blueprint for renewing our individual and collective consciousness, transforming our organizations and institutions, and re-enchanting our societies.
     The good news is that we can create a new narrative for our lives that will be inclusive and transform our worldview as we broaden our understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness. Think of Universal Consciousness as fields of flowing energy in which we transform our human consciousness, engage our neighbors, and build a society.
     David Bohm described a hidden domain of reality that we take for granted. He referred to the vast star-filled emptiness, the vacuum, the infinity of outer space as a Plenum, something that is infinitely full rather than infinitely empty. He saw the emptiness as fullness, as one whole, living organism – an undivided wholeness in flowing movement. I believe this describes the field of Universal Consciousness.
     Our interactions, our choices in this field of Consciousness, affect all of nature and life in the biosphere. We can help nature and life to flourish, or we can continue to break down the natural evolution of nature and manifest catastrophes like COVID-19.”
     Edwin E. Olson. “Become Conscious of Wholeness – Humanity’s Only Future.” Resource Publications, 2021. 

 

Art by Jean-Pierre Weill from The Well of Being