Most of us underestimatehow DESPERATELY we NEEDacceptance, approval, respect - ok LOVE - throughout life. As soon as we're born we cry out for attention, "Look at me! I'm alive & I NEED to belong to & be cared for by this family / tribe!" But conditioningvery quickly teaches us to change our cry to, "Look, I am USEFUL to this family / tribe!" This is a shiftfromrightly seeing ourselves as worthy of unconditional lovesimply because we're aliveto begging for scraps of attention. Sadly some, unable to attract even such 'conditional love,' will then pour their energies into attractingnegative attention. Being alone, ignored does not seem to be a viable option.
"Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly, embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all." Kristin Neff PhD TedX talk: "The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvtZBUSplr4
But self-compassion can only actually take place by undergoing a fundamental identity shift, from the conditioned small needy lonely self, longing for, & 'looking for love in all the wrong places' (“the story of me”) towho we really, truly are, which is the unconditioned, transpersonalSelf (Buddha-nature, “Christ within”, etc) - the very source of unconditional love. This is a massive unburdening AND what any transformative maturationultimately depends on. "According to the saints and mystics, love isthe very fabric of what we are; we are fashioned out of its warmth & openness. ... love is the central force that holds our whole life together and allows it to function." John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006.
So I posed the question, "What are definitions of Awakening?" not to a wise human being, but to Batgap's"Compassion Bot" which quickly provided a surprisingly decent, fairly nuanced, nonsense-free answer - mercifully the opposite of the old database admonition, "garbage in, garbage out!" :
"Awakening
is a profound and transformative shift in one's sense of identity and
perception. Here are a few perspectives that capture its essence:
Identity Shift: Awakening involves moving from a
self-oriented perspective, where a personal "self" is at the center, to
an expansive identity that includes everything. It's a movement to a
broader worldview that influences how you view, experience, and relate
to the world and others.
Awake Awareness: It is the transition from a
thought-focused consciousness to an awareness-based knowing, allowing a
deeper connection to the present moment. This state of being is often
associated with feelings of being in flow, selfless service, or deep
love, where you 'forget yourself.'
Direct Knowing of True Nature: Awakening is also
described as a direct recognition of a deeper, true nature, often
experienced as a profound absence of self. This state is characterized
by a unity experience where all is perceived as interconnected oneness.
Timeless Ground of Being: Awake awareness is
seen as the formless, boundless, and timeless essence that serves as the
foundation of our being. This awareness brings clarity, presence, and
freedom of choice.
In essence, awakening is not about changing beliefs or external
circumstances but rather about shifting how we organize our minds and
identities. It's about embodying an awareness-based way of knowing that
deeply connects us to our true self and the world.
Follow-up questions you might consider:
How can I start my journey towards awakening?
Are there specific practices that can facilitate awakening?
What role does service to others play in the process of awakening?
How do different spiritual traditions view awakening?
Can an awakening experience be sustained over time, and how?
As actionable next steps:
Reflect on moments when you've experienced feelings of connectedness or presence.
Explore meditation or mindfulness practices to cultivate awareness.
Engage in acts of service to deepen your connection with others.
Seek conversations or literature on various spiritual paths to broaden understanding."
Most of us assume that our identityis defined exclusively by: our name, age, body, family of origin, education, job, successes, failures, illnesses, ups & downs - ie "the story" about us that we keep telling ourselves & others. We've become habituated to an almost continuous level of self-concern - anxiety & fear about our comfort & survival as if alone in a hostile world.
One of the foremost experts in PTSD wrote: “If you feel safe & loved, your brain (is) specialized in exploration, play, & cooperation; if you are frightened & unwanted, it (is) specialized in managing feelings of fear & abandonment." Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.
But what Van Der Kolk observed after severe trauma - preoccupation with managing fear, anxiety & unworthiness - is now almost ubiquitous in our society. This widespread unbalanced mindset, self-concept & worldview is what Iain McGilchrist has been studying, researching, writing & lecturing about for the past 30 years. He's found that ouranxious self-concernactivates & keeps us in left-hemisphere-dominant thinking WHICHoverridesour muchwiser, more balanced right-hemisphere-dominant perspective. Our current, as well as 3 previous global crises, arose due to left-hemisphere-dominant thinking.
Below is part of a recent interview with Iain McGilchrist MD, PhD about his perspective on the huge problems we face, based on his extensive studies & research findings, described in 2 monumental, critically-acclaimed books: "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" in 2019, and "The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" in 2021. Here's a greatly abbreviated snapshot of, imho, his extremely important work:
“I see my work as essentially philosophy rather than something about the brain, but I think the divorce between philosophy and science has been a disaster for both parties, and I want to try and bring them together a bit in a way that I think could be helpful. Just a little bit about my progress or lack of it. I started off wanting to study philosophy and theology at university. I thought I would probably be ordained and go into a monastic order. But I discovered during the three years I was at Oxford that I wasn’t a very good candidate for monastic life. It wouldn’t have been good for me, and it wouldn’t have been good for the monastery. So that was ditched, and I got a fellowship which allowed me to explore all sorts of things. And I had a problem about the academic study of literature, because people took something that somebody had written in the past, that had great meaning, and that they had left to communicate something to us, and instead, we sat in the seminar room and took it apart. The piece of literature had its value because it was unique. The message was embodied and also implicit, not explicit. When you made it explicit, you lost the point completely, like explaining a joke. And in the seminar room we turned thisimplicit, embodied, unique thinginto something that was explicit, disembodied & with a message you could find anywhere. And that led me to write my first book, ‘Against Criticism,’ and I decided that what I needed to do is to find out more about the mind-body problem, because it seemed to me we were just too disembodied. I spent a lot of time in philosophy seminars on the mind-body problem, but it just seemed to me that the philosophers were far too disembodied in their approach. And around that time, Oliver Sacks had written a book called ‘Awakenings’ which I thought was very important. And he did two very wonderful things there, he went into individual cases in great detail, in order to show general points. This is a Goethean phenomenon. One of Goethe’s most important philosophical contributions is the idea that you don’t find the general by turning your back on the particular or the individual, but bygoing deeper into the particular in the individual. And he also seemed to me to be talking about what happened when the mind and body interacted in an odd way and something happened to the body and it changed the mind, or something happened in the mind and it had effects on the body. And the only way to know more about this was to study medicine, and so I did. And when I had qualified in medicine and was working at the Maudsley Hospital in London, which is probably the foremost psychiatric hospital in Britain, I heard a lecture one day by a colleague (John Cutting, whom I considered the most interesting living psychiatrist) who’d been studying the right hemisphere of the brain. It had never been my intention to study it, but he had done what lots of neurologists hadn’t done, which is to sit at the bedside of people who had had strokes, tumors or other injuries to the right hemisphere of the brain, and discovered that actually their consequences of this were more devastating for their ability to understand themselves, the world, or what was going on around them than a left hemisphere stroke, even though the left hemisphere most commonly made it difficult for them to use their right hand, to write, and to use language. So this was fascinating. And he told me in this lecture certain things that were based on a book, which was published by Oxford University press called, ‘The Right Cerebral Hemisphere and Psychiatric Disorders.’ He told me certain things that explained to me that the righthemisphere alone, really understands a unique case; that the left hemisphere has already taken whatever it is into a category, put it into a box, made it a representative of something rather than something unique in its own right. Also that the right hemisphereunderstood implicit meaning, irony, humor, metaphor, poetry, ritual, body language, facial expressions, the tone of voice, but the left hemisphere didn’t. It was more like a computer taking a book of syntax rules and semantics, and dictionary, and working out what people meant. And the third thing was that the right hemisphere was much more in touch with the body; the left hemisphere was effectively less so. I have to cut corners here enormously, but just to give you an idea which I think helps to explain why I ended up in this area. I went up to him afterwards and said this is very interesting, and I told him about the book I’d written about the philosophy of literature, and he wanted to read that. And that started a working relationship in which we researched hemisphere differences together. And I knew very, very well that this was a very risky thing to do. But I’ve got a perverse streak in me that if I think that there’s something here that’s really important, I’m not put off by people who say, ‘Oh that’s all rubbish. The thing about their brain hemispheres, it’s all been exploded. It’s all nonsense. It’s all pop psychology.’ Everyone warned me, ‘Don’t go into this.’ But of course it was true that what we then believed was wrong, but it didn’t mean that there were no differences, and the differences were fascinating. And it was the next 20 years of research, including neuroimaging at John Hopkins, & acquainting myself with the literature, & examining patients that led me to understand these hemisphere differences. And so these experiences were as an adjunct to a philosophical question about how we see the world, and what are the effective differences. I can put this as quickly as I can. For reasons of survival, all living creatures have to do 2 incompatible things at once. They have to be able to focus their attention on a detail so as to get it, and grab it, and eat it, or pick it up and use it, faster than anyone else, accurately. So a very clearly targeted, narrow beam of attention needs to be paid. But, if that’s the only attention you pay, then you don’t see the predators, you don’t see your kin, your conspecifics (organisms belonging to the same species), you just don’t understand where you are and you will not survive. So all the neural networks that we know, all the creatures, not just humans, but all the way down through mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds, insects, everything that we know seem to have at least two centers of attention, dedicated to these two differences. And we think this goes back very anciently from examining fossils of trilobites and the most ancient living creature still extent ... And it’s already asymmetrical. So there’s something very, very important about different attention. Effectively, if you pay attention to the world in one way, you will see one thing, and if you pay a different kind of attention, you will see another. One of the things I would say is that attention changes the world. It actually makes the world that we experience – the only world that we can possibly know – different. And it also makes us different, because if we pay a certain kind of attention, we can become alienated from the worldORwe can become connected with the world, for a start.
What do these two kinds of attention result in in phenomenological terms? Well, the left hemisphere’s attention builds up a picture of a world that is made of isolated fragments that have no context and don’t mean anythinguntil they’re put together by us. We arrange them, and we probably put them in a little category. The left hemisphere is very keen on putting things in a little box where they all belong together. And so you have a world which is simply made of fragments. The fragments are static. They’re frozen by this gorgon-like stare of the left hemisphere to capture it. (in Greek mythology, the Gorgons were 3 monstrous sisters with snakes for hair who could turn someone to stone just by looking at them). And they have no particular meaning for us. We are not connected with them. We are very distant from these things because we’re observing them and ready to attack them. And they have nosort of implicit meaning or connection with other things. Whereas the right hemisphere sees a world in which everything is flowing, changing all the time, in which everything is ultimately connected to everything else. Nothing is ever completely isolated. And that when you take something out of its context, you radically change what it is, completely change it. You can in fact reverse the take, or the meaning, or the impact of what it is you’re looking at by decontextualizing it. So these 2 ways of looking at the world are in a way both necessary. They both have a use. BUT they have contradictory effects. And what I began to see was that in the world we live in, we ONLY use the left hemisphere’s kind of attention.
When I was in Baltimore at the Johns Hopkins Hospital I was imaging brains and looking at the abnormal asymmetry in the brains of people with schizophrenia. There is a normal symmetry in the brain that is absolutely normal – the brain is bigger at the front on the right, and bigger at the back on the left. But in schizophrenia, it’s often reversed or absent. And we think that is connected with the phenomena of the illness. While I was there, I got a message from my colleague John Cutting to say that there was a fascinating book ... called, ‘Madness and Modernism’ by Louis Sass, a psychologist at Rutgers in New York. What he showed was that in the modern period, people thought that their poetry, their stories, their paintings above all, & even their music, showed an aspect of something that was like what happens in schizophrenia. And in schizophrenia the world makes no sense. Things are no longer coherent. And he points to about 25 different phenomena that are seen in schizophrenia, but are also replicated in the last hundred years of philosophy, literature & art. I thought that this was absolutely fascinating. It’s a brilliant book and very well written. It may sound rather glib, but it isn’t. It’s extremely thorough and well thought through. And I began to think, if that’s happening now, we can’t all be getting schizophrenia, but I had already discovered that people with schizophrenia are very like people witha left hemisphere in overdrive and a right hemispherethat is not functioning properly. And again, I haven’t got time to go into that. But that led me to think, what’s happening nowis thatwe are not listening to what our right hemisphere tells us, only towhat our left hemisphere tells us. And then I thought, maybe there were other times in history when the balance was better. And I found in short that three times over Western history, starting with the Greeks and working forwards to post-modernism, there have been three times when a flourishing societybegan to drift more & more to the take of the left hemisphere before collapsing. So that is quite relevant for us, because I believe we’re in that terminal phase now, unless we wake up and see what it is we’re doing. It’s not enough to have a list of things to do, because if we don’tchange in our heart & our mind, if we don’tchange the whole way we look at the world, we can’t survive. That in an incredibly brief & simple way, is to try and explain why I think this subject is important.” Interviewer: “The way you describe it now, and in your books, really shows how our technological relationship to reality, what defines modernism, and also the kind of effectiveness of modernism, and the particularity of modernism, is very much related to the phenomena described withthe left hemisphere of the brain. And ... that our crises may be related to the one-sidedness of our culture. …” “The central thing is to do with values, because the value of the left hemisphere is in getting things, grabbing things, possessing things, having power over them, having control, and all the rest. It sees this tiny thing. It’s dedicated to something it already knows at once. But all the rest, the uncommitted attention to the whole, is yielded by theright hemisphere. And I sometimes put it like this, that the left hemisphere helps us apprehend the world, … whereas the right hemisphere helps us to comprehend the world, which is really to hold it together, perhaps to Big Life, but it’s a bit more than that. … This is the difference between them in their values, and so there’s something addictive about the left hemisphere, because it gives you power, it gives you control. Technology is the tool of the left hemisphere. But the important thing about technology is it’s neither good nor bad, it depends on the wisdom of the person who’s wielding it. And wisdom is what we’re leaving out of this picture. The right hemisphere is wise, and sees a lot. The left hemisphere isrelatively ignorant, so it sees literally less than the right hemisphere, understands much less and doesn’t see the need forwhat the right hemisphere knows. Whereas the right hemisphereseeing more, knows that its knowledge is limited, & knows that it needs the left hemisphere. So they have an unfortunate inequality, in which the one that should be in control – the right hemisphere, the master as I call it, the one that can see where we need to go, that can exert wisdom, isn’t in control. Instead, we’re driven bythe desire for stuff, for acquisition, for power, for control which is the left hemisphere’s raison d'être.” The Brain, the Sacred and the Soul - Iain McGilchrist & Thomas Steininger of Evolve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5g4tOu6Hgk
So when we're finally fed up with "the story of me," and are ready & courageous enough to experience who we really are, who has been witnessing all the changes over this lifetime of ours, who has been consistently aware of all the changes taking place in that mirror of ours, start meditating in earnest, including "open questioning" or "self-inquiry," and instead of being ruled by fear & aggression, loving wisdomwill guideus.
Welcome to a brand new year! This can be the best year we've ever lived. And yes, it is entirely up to each one of us.
Forget about past New Year's resolutions. What I'm suggesting is on an entirely different level than losing weight, or consuming less booze or weed. How about initiating a radically positive shift in your life?
How often do we catch ourselves repeating a set of thoughts, speech or other behaviors that we regret, feel ashamed of - that make us feel like bratty kids rather than mature, evolved adults? These tend to start ascritical, disparaging, demeaning thoughts about others. It's best to intercept & stop these frequent slips at the earliest thinking stage.
So what's with all this criticizing self talk? We're very, very familiar with these story lines, because we repeat them many times every single day! They're like a trail we walk many times each day, where there are very slippery downhill slopes, and we know where these are, can feel the downward incline immediately, and know that if we take just one additional step, we'll slide all the way down to the bottom. Once we start criticizing, we have unconsciously assumed a separate identity - our 'small self' (neurotic pain body),from which we can look down on inferior 'others.' It's an embarrassingly dumb, messed-up sense of self, but it's the only one most of us (incorrectly assume we) have. This is very much like children who've been removed from abusive homes. When asked whether they wish to be placed in a foster home, or return to their abusive family, most choose the latter - because they fear the unknownmore than 'the devil they know.' We also get a sick sense of comfortable familiarity, as we sink into our crappy little assumed 'separate self' - almost a sense of 'being right' - like a destitute homeless person crawling back into a crumbling, wet cardboard box under a bridge. The question, 'Would you rather be right or happy?' applies here. When strong emotions like fear, anger or hatred take over, we may (briefly) feel absolutely sure we're 'right'but are actually miserable.
Most of us are completely unaware how incessantly we tell ourselveswhat we don't like vs what we do like - our 'preferences' - the chief purpose of which is to reassure ourselves that we have a solid, permanent identity - which deep down we know is false. As we gradually learn to notice & keep letting go of self-talk about preferences, we gradually learn to become intimate with everyone & everything, rather than remaining alienated, due to reality being severely distorted & edited by our preferences.
“… live in reality and enjoy the moments that are unfolding in front of you. That’s what you can do. Use your mind to be creative, inspiring, and do great things. Don’t let the mind always be thinking about itself and what it wants. Learn to enjoy life as it is – instead of limiting the ways you can enjoy it to serve your past impressions.” Michael A. Singer “Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament” Sounds True, 2022. A VERY USEFUL GUIDE TO LIVING JOYFULLY - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
We can only appreciate reality when we no longer look at it through the dense fog of our preferences. We can gradually learn to recognize, accept, and stop being slaves to our preferences. We arefree to choose the quality of our lives because it is independent of external conditionsas perceived through our preferences.
Portrait in L'Harmattan gallery lharmattan.com Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec
Yesterday, a long-time meditator friend asked how I was. I answered, "No complaints at all - the timeless aspect is perfect; the temporary part is doing its temporary thing." The answer entirely depends on who answers - the "small self" or the "Self." We all are a mysterious combination of these very different ways of being & experiencing, depending greatly on how, in the moment, narrowly focused we are on ourselvesvshow intimately connected we feel with others & the environment. The practice of self-inquiry involves repeatedly checking in by asking ourselves, for example, 'WHO is suffering?' Thesmall self is a way of being & experiencing life with a very narrow, self-centered, short-term-goal-oriented, survivalist perspective. Intermittently, for brief periods of time, this approach is entirely appropriate - WHILE performing a specific task, and WHILE one is in danger. Balanced, short, intermittent action of the small self is referred to as the "quiet ego." Most of the time, what's more appropriate is a broad, allocentric (others-centered) & ecocentric (environment-centered), timeless, peaceful, spacious, unconditionally-loving perspective, often referred to as (capital s) Self. This is a dimension within each of us - our true nature - that is deeper or higher than the continuous movement of thinking/self-talk. The Self is dominant in highly-evolved individuals, often with a long-time meditation, yoga, tai chi / qi gong or prayer practice. Historically, mystics, saints & monastics, but today increasingly ordinary people are awakening to this evolved level of consciousness.
The lives of dictators, stridently aggressive politicians, CEOs & other cut-throat movers & shakers are dominated by the 'noisy ego' of small self. Sadly, due in large part to the increasingly toxic nature of our culture, manyotherwise decent peoplesee only danger & experience nothing more meaningful & profound than the noise of their own self-talk, which too easily drowns-out awareness of the silent, still, peaceful Self.
"The most important question a human being needs to answer according to Einstein: 'Is the universe a friendly place or not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993.
“the world we believe in becomes the world we live in. If I see the world as a hostile place where only winners thrive, I may well become aggressive, selfish, and grandiose to survive in such a milieu. Later in life I will gravitate to competitive environments and endeavors that can only confirm that view and reinforce its validity. Our beliefs are not only self-fulfilling; they are world-building.” Gabor Maté, Daniel Maté. “The Myth of Normal. Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture.” Alfred A. Knopf, 2022. IMPORTANT BOOK!
“Emptiness is two things at once: the absence of self and the presence of the Divine. Thus as self decreases, the Divine increases.” Bernadette Roberts
"There’s only one happiness and it’s who you are. There’s only one place to find lasting happiness, and that is to know who you are and to be who you are.” Francis Lucille
So what can we do? Perhaps practice & do our best to continuously embody mindfulness, which Caverly Morgan defines as: “Being here and now with kindness.” www.peaceinschools.org
MANY have to "hit rock bottom" as a result addictions or other types of major shocks to the system ("shipwrecks") which completely shatter worldviews & self-concepts, forcing them to construct far wiser, shock-proof worldviews & self-concepts from scratch. SOME of uscontinuously observe
our internal dialogue, and realize how
self-talk keeps us sleepwalking through life, & then we feel the urge WAKE
UP and start LIVING deliberately.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau
“The only real purpose of being here on this earth is to learn or to re-remember our original nature state of no limitations.” Lester Levenson
“The only service you can do for anyone (including yourself) is to remind them of their true nature.” Stephen Levine
When we relax, when we reallylet go of every conceivable mental & physical contracted armoring; let go of every anxious urge to do something, go somewhere, be someone, etc; when we allow ourselves to become as silent & still as possible; and IF this peaceful state doesn't frighten us, & we nowdeeply listen tothe most delicately subtle sense of aliveness within, THAT ephemeral, untouchable, undefinable, spark of vitality is - imho - who / what we actually are. One wisdom tradition advises: "Rest in 'I am' before 'I am' becomes anything." Imho, this spark of life has LITTLE to do with our personal fears, neuroses, preferences, "must haves" & "must avoids" - superficial, transient nonsense we typically (wrongly) assume is who we are. Imho, our ultimate identity has EVERYTHING to do with our transpersonalBuddha-nature,Great Spirit, Brahman, Tao, Yahweh, God, Allah, Primordial Source, The Light, Love, Loving Intelligence, Self, Unified Field, "The Force" (Star Wars), etc.
“The term 'perennial philosophy' was coined by Agostino Steuco (1497-1548) and refers to a fourfold realization: (1) there is only one Reality (call it, among other names, God, Mother, Tao, Allah, Dharmakaya, Brahman, or Great Spirit) that is the source & substance of all creation; (2) that while each of us is a manifestation of this Reality, most of us identify with something much smaller, that is, our culturally conditioned individual ego; (3) that this identification with the smaller self gives rise to needless anxiety, unnecessarysuffering, and cross-cultural competition and violence; and (4) that peace, compassion, & justice naturally replace anxiety, needless suffering, competition, and violence when we realize our true nature as a manifestation of this singular Reality. The great sages & mystics of every civilization throughout human history have taught these truths in the language of their time and culture. It is the universality and timelessness of this wisdom that makes it the perfect focus for the spiritually independent seeker." Rami Shapiro. “Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent.” SkyLight Paths, 2013.
“The two extreme worldviews are probably represented by materialism and the perennial philosophy, the central core of understanding common to the great religions. The materialistic perspective suggests that life and consciousness are accidental byproducts of matter, and that their evolution is driven by the interplay of random events and the instinct for survival. The purpose of human life and evolution is solely what humanity decides it is. The perennial philosophy, which lies at the heart of the great wisdom traditions & religions and is increasingly said to represent their deepest thinking, suggests that consciousness is central and its development is the primary goal of existence. This development will culminate in the condition variously known in different traditions as enlightenment, liberation, salvation, moksha, or satori. The descriptions of this condition show remarkable similarities across cultures & centuries. Its essence is the recognition that the distortions of our usual state of mind are such that we have been sufferingfrom a case of mistaken identity. Our true nature is something much greater, an aspect of a universal consciousness, Self, Being, Mind, or God. The awakening to this true nature, claimed a Zen master, is ‘the direct awarenesss that you are more than this puny body or limited mind. Stated negatively, it is the realization that the universe is not external to you. Positively, it is experiencing the universe as yourself.’ … Typical is the claim by an Englishman that to realize our true identity is to ‘find that the I, one’s real, most intimate self, pervades the universe and all other beings. That the mountains, and the sea, and the stars are a part of one’s body, and that one’s soul is in touch with the souls of all creatures.’ Nor are such descriptions the exclusive province of mystics. They have been echoed by philosophers, psychologists, & physicists. ‘Out of my experience … one final conclusion dogmatically emerges,’ said the great American philosopher William James (1960). ‘There is a continuum of cosmic consciousness against which our individuality builds but accidental forces, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother sea.’ From this perspective, evolution is a vast journey of growing self-awareness and a return to our true identity. Our current crises are seen as expressions that arise from our mistaken identity. But they can also be seen as self-created challenges that may speed us on our evolutionary journey toward ultimate self-recognition.” Roger Walsh. "Human survival: A psychoevolutionary analysis." ReVision 1985; 8: 7-10. (available for free on the web)
“… there is one, indivisible, unborn, ultimate reality beyond time & space, name & form. The discovery of this realityas our own true nature is the real opportunity, possibility and purpose of human existence. … suffering & delusion (is) caused by ignorance of the real Self.” Mooji
“Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed - be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization - will be unavoidable. . . The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility.” Vaclav Havel, address to the U.S. congress, when he was President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003)
