What's In Your Mind?

Evolution: the missing piece

Richard suggests that I read a book: The Celestine Prophecy. Intrigued by his insistence, I buy it. The cover says: "a book that comes along once in a lifetime to change lives forever", "the book that will come to define our decade", etc. How dramatic! I have never read a book with such endearing appraisals!

I am a little skeptical of course, but start reading it in earnest, and find the first few chapters a little boring, triggering a distinct "but I already know this!" feeling (i.e. I already know that we are all One, that matter can be construed as energy, that time is what you make of it, etc). But it only makes me more impatient to see what's coming next, so I continue reading eagerly.

And upon reaching Chapter 5, "The message of the mystics", everything changes: I know that I am now hitting a piece that was until now missing in my "we are all One philosophy/worldview", a piece that makes it much more complete, and that makes things that did not fit until now, now fit together. It feels like a light has been turned on where earlier there was darkness and confusion. The missing piece: EVOLUTION! In other words (and this is the first time I look at things that way), my "we are all One" philosophy works also through time and -- consequently -- does not stop at the human family: we are all One Big Thing unfolding through time, from matter to life to animal life to human life…

The other thing is that I realize for the first time in my life that the experience described in the book as a "mystic experience" I have actually HAD! When I was 13, at a summer camp in the mountains, I had an experience of indescribably profound bliss/understanding, but, not knowing how to relate to it in my ordinary life, I had sort of put that experience in parentheses to see if it would re-occur (it never really did) or if I would find tools to interpret it (I never sought, not found any... until... today!) I remember distinctly (how could I forget?) how it felt back then, the incredible feeling of bliss and insight, and the supernatural beauty of nature, and this is pretty much how the experience is described in the book!

Somehow everything is starting to make more sense, I feel much closer to "knowing what's going on" than before I opened the book, I am vibrating with excitement!

Can't you see the fantastic evolution of Life?

Francois replies to my exalted email. First, he says that what he calls sacred is what I call spiritual, so, says he, we are talking about the same thing here. Then, he goes on to say that I perceive what I perceive (i.e. that we are all one) only because I am white and rich. That, if I were poor and black, I wouldn’t, I just couldn’t perceive that. He goes on to say that, when humanity’s survival instinct wakes up (like I suggested in my email to him), it generally does so in violence (in the good French tradition, he envisions a revolution that will put an end to the materialistic/consumerist world). My reply:

"Yes, I know that you and I are talking about the same thing, when you say "sacred" and I say "spiritual", but beware of the word "sacred" as it carries some connotations that may not correspond to what you are trying to say (e.g. religious, dark ages, etc). I am studying also to acquire a good vocabulary and stay away from shaky concepts.

I think that material progress does not drive a recession of Spirit, but rather the opposite. I would not have such an intense spiritual life if I had to constantly worry about my next meal, or about such and such infection that wouldn’t heal if I didn’t have health care. Or, simply, if I did not have money to take off to nature and enjoy a "mystical experience"!

I do not see anything of what you describe. In fact, it is in you, it is you who conveys these ideas, this pessimistic worldview. You could as well have an optimistic discourse, and look at the positive. Why don’t you do it? Why don’t you try to identify the areas where YOU can take action? What is the point of manipulating big words, big concepts (e.g. "the receding of democracy"), if they don’t empower you to act? The receding of hope and the rising of cynicism, these I can see in your email – and not really elsewhere. You do NOT have faith (you think that everything is getting worse than it used to be), you do not see the fantastic evolution of living energy, of this collective consciousness I was telling you about – how can you act without this faith?

Why does material progress bother you? It frees, it alleviates suffering, it brings us closer to the spiritual – this is how I see it. Like everything else, it is what you want to make of it. Why always protesting, resisting, refusing what IS? This is the lesson of Buddhism: accept the world the way it is, the first step towards "enlightenment". The way things are. It serves no purpose to constantly reject what IS. You cannot move forward. One day, you will realize how much time you lost by not accepting the world the way it is. This is a premise to action.

Once again, this despair you talk about, you carry it in you. Probably it has been imputed to you, but you carry it in you. I don’t. (…) Every human being (including the poor and the blacks), has in herself the capacity to understand that other people’s judgments have no value. The "caste-system" view you portray, I don’t have it, I don’t carry it in me. It is not because I am white and not poor. It is because I am in touch with this collective consciousness – I am strong inside, and I know that you and I and whoever are instances of the same thing, that we are one. I do not struggle against others. Once again, don’t project onto others (e.g. black, or poor people) your personal battles. They probably don’t apply, the same way as, when you were telling me that developing countries don’t want greenhouse gas emissions trading, it was, simply, incorrect. I have friends of all colors and of all means: none of them seems to see the world the way you see it. (…) My friends of color accept the world the way it is – i.e. that, if they happen to belong to what is perceived as a "minority", here or there, at some point in time, they might need to deploy an extra effort to be acknowledged by the majority (…). One must play with the cards that are in their hands, in this instance of life on earth. One, simply, does not have a choice in the matter.

No, that we are all one is not a perception (lots of things are a perception, such as the color of my skin), it is the reality. The basis, in other words.

Don’t you have metaphysical questions? Who am I, why am I, etc? Not me. Not anymore. And I’m not the only one! I am meeting more and more people who feel the same way. Everyday, I discover a bit more of the joy of living in this world during the few years that we are to live in it… I marvel at it a little more every day."

You can gear the future in the right direction only if you believe that there is any

In response to my email, Francois asks: "what violence?" (Apparently, he has not realized that it is he who brought the word "violence" into our conversation). He also continues painting a gloomy caricature of our industrial civilization, saying "chidren nowadays just know frozen fried chicken sticks, they have never seen a chicken alive", etc. My reply:

"You had brought up violence in your email. Violence is something I am not interested in. I don’t have it in me.

What is this caricature of industrial life that you are painting? Do you know people who work in the industry? Why make this parody, this caricature? You remind me of a Charlie Chaplin movie. What is the point spitting on the food you buy? Go live in the countryside and grow your own vegetables, if it will make you happier!

People who work in the industry are heartless monsters who only think about their profits, this is a well-known fact… Why do you carry in yourself so much hatred towards those who strive to build the economy, to be of service to society by producing the goods that she needs? Why are you angry about this natural fact that it is easier for a society to share its tasks (economies of scale), rather than everyone doing everything for themselves? This is actually a measure of the STRENGTH of a society (or a group, or a couple). Why is it bad? Why are you upset at this world which is ours, which is the only one there is? Why, once again, do you refuse reality? (…)

If man had not burnt down the first tree to warm himself up, humanity would probably not have survived very long. That’s THE WAY IT IS – it is evolution. Why negate 2 million years of human history? What do you think is the point of criticizing the evolution of our species? You cannot change anything to the past, and you can gear the future in the right direction only if you believe that there is any. Here, all you do is convey cynicism, violence and rage. I wonder where you picked this all up!"

Is life less spiritual than it used to be?

Continuing our email dialogue, Francois now tells me how life was more spiritual in the past, citing a book he read on traditional people – how the very act of hunting for food was "spiritual" for them, and how, in addition, they did other "spiritual" activities like painting, etc (while all we do now is spend all our time seeking to accumulate money).

"Food is not the only thing! Our traditional friends don’t have physicians, nor do they have vacation, possibility to travel, to study, etc. I imagine that they can’t read (no teachers).

Hmm.

Spirit is present in every act of your life IF YOU SO DESIRE. It is a matter of personal choice. Spirit is present in every act of my life now. Except that my life is not about fishing, but about managing research programs on Climate Change.

I don’t see what makes you think that their life is more spiritual than mine, for example. It is a judgment that you make (of them and of me, or of your contemporaries) – by projecting your personal fantasy of a life close to nature, etc.

It is up to each one of us to make every act a spiritual act. It is the choice I’m making now. And my life has acquired since I’ve made this choice an extraordinary intensity. Also, I have not spent a single minute of my life seeking to accumulate money – and I know that the chicken that I eat has been alive. I actually now eat as little meat as possible. Also, I chant, I contemplate nature, I read, I do yoga, I meditate.

My life is very "spiritual". At the same time, I gladly benefit from the material progress that my fellow men have set in motion to give me a better life (longer life span, more leisure time, less pain, etc).

You? Is your life not as spiritual as you would like?"

The work is within yourself and nowhere else

As an astute twist in the dialogue we started a few days ago, Francois recommends that I read Tony Robbins (it shows that he somehow got the hint that I was trying to give him that the work is within oneself and nowhere else). I send him the link to this great interview of Tony Robbins that I found. A few excerpts (Tony speaking):

"Life's greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret."

"Ultimately, the only way to be fulfilled is to constantly grow and to contribute in a meaningful way to other people, to the world. And in order to grow, all of us have to be willing to let go of our fear and let go of who we are, and we've got to set standards and we've got to challenge ourselves. What makes people leaders in life is their willingness to say, "Raise your standard. Demand more from yourself." That's what all leaders of any sort do: They call people to a higher standard. I think that causes people to grow. And we must grow. (…) If you don't feel like you're growing, even if millions of people love you, you've got nothing. (…) You're either growing or dying—there's no in-between."

"Growth does not come from having an intellectual discussion with yourself. Growth only comes when you transform. And you must take that growth and convert that to something meaningful so that the world becomes better, so that the heaven on earth that we were talking about earlier actually becomes a possible reality—and I think it ultimately will. It already is for many people. It's just a matter of making your peer group become humanity instead of your peer group being a small number of people that you have influence over or impact on in your lifetime."

"I believe that ultimately my life is guided, but I also believe that along the way, I have a conscious choice whether to listen to that inner guidance or not. And if I listen to it, then my life turns out very differently than if I don't. And knowing when it's really your inner guidance and when it's your fear speaking is very important."

"When I'm being my spiritual best, I don't know what's happening. It's just coming through me. I put myself in a place. I ask for guidance. I pray and then I trust that it's there and it shows up."

"I believe the ultimate path to enlightenment is the cultivation of gratitude. Because in a state of gratitude, real gratitude, deep spiritual, emotional, physical and definitely soul-level appreciation, there is no fear."

"I think that anything we can do to more thoroughly understand how we function as human beings, what really drives us, and how we can utilize that understanding to be better human beings and better spiritual beings, is definitely a part of our evolution. And I think it has to happen rapidly because our technology is multiplying in its capacity and its strength and its diversity more rapidly than our technology for the management of human emotion, which is what drives all human action. And I think that's the part that has to be focused on. We need to develop the emotional and spiritual muscles to deal with whatever challenges show up."

The manifested world

Here is an excerpt from Conversations with God 2 that I quite like. "God" explains the manifested world in one elegant paragraph:

"I devised a way for you to create anew, and Know, Who You Are in your experience. I did this by providing you with:
1. Relativity - a system wherein you could exist as a thing in relationship to something else
2. Forgetfulness - a process by which you willingly submit to total amnesia, so that you can not know that relativity is merely a trick, and that you are All of It
3. Consciousness - a state of Being in which you grow until you reach full awareness, then becoming a True and Living God, creating and experiencing your own reality, expanding and exploring that reality, changing and re-creating that reality as you stretch your consciousness to new limits - or shall we say, to no limit.
In this paradigm, Consciousness is everything."

The meaning of life

Another excerpt from Conversations with God that I really like:

"Here is the meaning, the purpose of Your Life: to create Yourself, to create Who You Are. To express, to experience, to declare, to fulfill, to be, Who You Really Are.

Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about Who You Are. Every act is an act of self-definition.

Once you understand this, things start to change. You start seeing everything with a new perspective, you start placing everything you do in context.

With every decision, every thought you have, every word you say, every deed you do, ask yourself: Is this Who I Am? And things will start to change. And you will know, as you create Her, Who You Are."

In other words, every time you are about to do something, you may want to ask yourself: "Is this Who I Really Am?" It sounds utterly silly, but it is actually very helpful. Some of friends share with me their existential crises, and it often boils down to this basic thing: they perceive a GAP between who they ARE and who they WANT TO BE. They know there is a gap, yet they do not seem to pull themselves together and fill the gap. In fact, most of them seem to have a strong BELIEF that the gap between who they are and who they want to be cannot be filled, and, instead of moving in the direction of who they want to be (i.e. Who They Really Are), they rationalize the existence of this gap. I had done exactly this for many years before I "woke up", so I am quite familiar with this!

Another corollary thought is this: is there any point living a life that has already been lived?

What you fear is what you will draw to you

Here is another quote that I love from Conversations with God. Looks innocuous, but it is actually quite profound...

"What you think is what you get.
What you fear is what you will draw to you.
What you resist, persists.
What you look at disappears - giving you a chance to recreate it all over again, if you wish, or banish it forever from your experience.
What you choose, you experience."

Evolution, Heaven on Earth, and the Tree of Knowledge

Email to a friend:

"I am only now (today, at age almost 31) coming to terms with the idea that life is not designed to have you be exactly who you want to be.

Only now.

My parents never knew this. They think, and taught me, that life involves necessarily (by definition) enduring some form of latent pain.

Evolution. This is evolution. This is the process of slowly waking up to the fact that, indeed, we are living in the Garden of Eden. We just forgot about it, as we started to use the beautiful tool that sits in our skull: the dualistic mind, the one that distinguishes good from bad and allows us to create – i.e. as we "ate the fruit from the tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil)". We can now remember."

We cannot change the world, again

Marco brings again the topic of changing the world (which I have already addressed with him, and which I often address, e.g. here). Says he: "I don’t think one can change the world" and the very classic "one’s actions are like drops in the ocean". I reply:

"But... I AM changing the world. Your world, my world, our world. All the time. This is all I do. This is all everybody does, except now I am conscious of it – all the time.

Look how the world has been changed. It was by individuals. AWAKENED individuals. Individuals who had understood the process, remembered what they are here for.

Jesus, Gandhi, Mozart, Einstein, etc, etc. How ELSE do you change the world darling, how ELSE? How ELSE than THROUGH YOURSELF? What ELSE is there? How ELSE is the world changing?

Not through the billion people who are just mirrors of one another, because they are not letting themselves remember who they are – agreed. Either you are a mirror of all others or you change and let people mirror you – and contemplate the waves it creates AD INFINITUM.

I look what is inside and I can tell you what is outside. If inside there is "me me me", then outside there is no changing the world. If inside there is "the world needs this, the world needs that" then there is changing the world.

As simple as that.

So indeed, Marco, check your beliefs, check your belief system. Because, as you may have noticed already [see here, quote from Conversations with God],

"What you think is what you get,
What you fear is what you will draw to you,
What you resist, persists,
What you look at disappears – giving you a chance to recreate it all over again, if you wish, or banish it forever from your experience,
What you choose, you experience."

Or have you?

This is something I read and I concur 100% [see here, quote from Conversations with God]:

"Here is the meaning, the purpose of Your Life: to create Yourself, to create Who You Are. To express, to experience, to declare, to fulfill, to be, Who You Really Are.

Every decision you make – every decision that you make every second – is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about Who You Are. Every act is an act of self-definition.

Once you understand this, things start to change. You start seeing everything with a new perspective, you start placing everything you do in context.

With every decision, every thought you have, every word you say, every deed you do, ask yourself: Is this Who I Am? And things will start to change. And you will know, as you create Her, Who You Are."

I also understand you very well, Marco, and nothing ever puzzles me. I understand your beliefs. You may want to try out a new set of beliefs, just to validate that what you believe is what you get :-) !!"