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How do you see the election results inside a Deeptime context?
How are you pulling from the wisdom in your cultures and communities to cope and move forward? (Insert your comment in the comment field below, then click on “submit.” Sitewide discussions are public. For security, only basic and premium members, and those who have taken courses, are able to make comments.) If you have any trouble making your comment, please write to [email protected].-
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Now is the time to widen our perspective. We are not alone in our struggle. Not only does almost half the country supports our yearning, but our solar system is cheering us on, our wondrous galaxy is invested in our success, and the whole universe has our back. With that kind of love and intentionality holding us in its arms our struggle is no longer a fiery battle. It is a gentle yielding to the flow of the greater whole that surrounds us, while tapping into the creative energy that has kept the universe evolving for 14 billion years.
Carl Sagan’s quote on the pale blue dot image comes to mind:“To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
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Sarbmeet – Your nourishing words soothe my heart and my body. Thank you! I know there is room for all the emotions – sorrow, anger, bewilderment, fear – and then the settling back into the loving embrace of the Unfolding that is holding us. Being with all of it as best we can.
I am also remembering that Thomas Berry told Brian that there would be great suffering along the path to the Ecozoic. To make room for that in community, and walk with kindness and gentleness, as best we can, with our fellow humans and the Earth and the Cosmogenesis. To ease suffering when we can and be present when we can’t, as best we can. And sometimes to fall asleep with the sound of the gentle rain for company.
I find my lens widens to embrace the Great Unfolding and then narrows to feel the possible effects in this moment and the next on my child, my grandchildren, the Earth herself. The grieving that comes of that seems just right, too. So it is a lot, and I’m grateful for your words, Sarbmeet, and for this community.
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Regarding the recent election, I wanted to offer some thoughts on perspective, namely on how the human has access to, and interacts with, the process of cosmogenesis
For me, I think in terms of access to the processes of the universe through the self. It does not make sense to me to think in terms of a global perspective that I am somehow a part of, with simply a presumption of a self. I see the self as a portal to global processes and as such requires careful attention.
The Gestalt framework of figure/ground can be helpful here, where one’s overall perception includes both as they form a whole. You cannot have one without the other, like yin and yang. But the focus shifts back and forth between what is immediate (figural) and what is in the background (ground).
In the Deeptime Perspective, at times the universe is figural as it dominates the current awareness, with the self in the background. At other times the self is figural and dominant, with the universe in the background. A person at higher levels of differentiation can shift back and forth with one’s experiences, attending to what is important at that time. However, anxiety disrupts this flow back and forth as one get locked in on one side or the other, in this case the universe or the self. And then the person makes poor decisions, driven by attempts to relieve anxiety.
For me it is important to focus on the self initially as one deals with the anxiety generated by the recent election, which now permeates many relationships, close to home in one’s family and in society at large. This anxiety that spreads through these networks of relationships compounds the challenge to remain calm, within those systems, and maintain a balanced perspective of figure and ground, the self and the universe.
I think it is a distortion to think of the disruption created by this election in terms of cataclysm. Instead, it does make sense to me to think of it as major disruption in human relationships at this current time in history. And so I think it is important to think in terms of one’s own reactions before framing it in the larger perspective of the universe. Actually, one could think of this disruption in human relationships as an opportunity to manage one’s own anxiety to get to a calmer place that advances noogenesis in human relationships, which can facilitate the larger process of cosmogenesis.
This can happen as one can focus on oneself, with awareness of one’s own reactive patterns of handling anxiety, and thereby gain a more functional perspective of figure and ground, as the focus shifts back and forth between the self and the universe.
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I appreciate this forum to share my journey through the past week.
The night before the results a friend and I were recalling how grief and disappointment often lead to something new. Painful but beneficial gifts only seen in the rear view mirror.
When I heard the election results I felt immediate grief and anxiety and decided to have all the feelings that grief brings. I have cried, been scared and cried some more. I made a list of things I would do for the next 4 years.
Examples from my list. Everyday I will write a poem that does not have to be good, smile at someone I don’t know, practice yoga and meditation to calm myself.
Take a trip once a month, host a dinner party once a month, tutor second graders in reading, avoid the news, learn and practice Reiki.
This is the first poem I wrote.
A feeling of falling
into the abyss
into surrender
into creativity
into panic
into acceptance
over and over again.
I also had a dream. I was at my childhood home and there was a tall man with a clown wig on going from window to window taunting my dogs and scaring me. He would not go away. I closed the blinds and he left.
I am feeling very spiritually connected and writing my daily poem after meditating on scripture or a Mary Oliver poem. I feel like this is my small but necessary part to add some positive energy to the Universe. I cannot watch, listen or read any news. Just an accidental headline sends me into a panic. Guarding my serenity feels like the most important thing right now. This could change but for now it’s all I’ve got.
Love and peace to all,
Teresa
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As I ponder the election results, I reflect on my participation in the outcome. What did I do and what did I not do – consciously or unconsciously – to help manifest the outcome? And I know, without in any way beating myself up, that financial investments that I’ve made and lifestyle choices that I continue to make – supported the ego-driven and profit-driven crusade placing Mr. Trump back at the helm of the country. I further know that I did not go all in to use my knowledge of interconnectedness and my talents in communicating to support the deeptime vision which may have affected even one vote in “our” direction. (Recognizing, of course, that we are one.) The elections, thus, remind me that it is time for me to awaken to my full potential – to manifest my authentic power as suggested by Gary Zukov. I urge all of us to look deeply within. Perhaps, as I need to do, make different investment and lifestyle choices. But, as importantly, bring forth our sacred gifts for the benefit of humanity and the living Earth. This is the time of awakening. Who am I really? And what then is now mine to do? And so I begin. Feeling blessed.
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Thank you for this opportunity, Orla and Jennifer. Some thoughts:
Ilya Prigogine- “When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.”
https://igcummins.substack.com/p/it-will-melt?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email . This comes from my former pastor, Ian Cummins– a mystic masquerading as a Presbyterian Minister 🙂
And Krista Tippett— start at 48:00 for Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) quote. https://bioneers.org/how-then-might-we-live-on-being-an-intimate-interview-with-krista-tippett/– when his followers questioned rebuilding when the bombing kept happening, his reply was: “We do this because it’s the next right action within arms reach.” So our personal challenge each day is: What is the next best step within arms reach that is mine to do? while at the same time acknowledging Rilke’s cautionary statement: ” to rush to the answer to the question is to deny the gravity of the question.”
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Thank you all for your wisdom on how to cope with the present crisis. And particularly to Bonnie for reminding us that Thomas Berry said (not just to Brain Swimme but in many of his writings) there would be much suffering during the transition from technological civilization to the Ecozoic. I noticed when taking the recent course on his thought that no one seemed to want to acknowledge this aspect of this teachings. And it’s not just Berry. Nearly every spiritual and ecological teacher I’ve encountered over the past three decades has been saying that our technological civilization is unsustainable and that we are headed for a breakdown. It seems like we (and our political leaders) have been hanging on by our fingernails, trying to plug the holes in the dike and putting out fires and … (insert your own favorite cliche here), hoping to get through crisis after crisis without wanting to question the viability of the cultural and economic assumptions underlying our civilization. People sensed this wasn’t working and voted for the only alternative offered to them. My sense is that this will only accelerate the breakdown. When that doesn’t work, someone (us?) needs to be ready with an alternative vision.
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Hello to everyone at DTN.
I’m Irish, living in Ireland. The first time Trump was elected president, it upset me greatly. I found myself part of very negative conversations and they were doing me no good. I wondered how to conteract this negativity. So one thing was, to not allow myself to be drawn into the negativity. Refuse, privately in my mind, to participate in those conversations. Then I decided to start praying for him. I started to send him positive energy and love. My belief being that love can change all things to good.
My prayer was the same prayer that I would wish on anyone: “May you be happy, may you be well and may you be at peace. May love act freely in your life. May you seek to be guided by love.”Another thing I did was to send out a message to everyone I knew, asking them to consider this as a spiritual practice, rather than allow ourselves to drown in negativity or even hate.
Only some very close friends responded to my messages and said they would give that a try. So many said nothing to me about it. So I decided that they were just not ready for that.
I really hoped for Trump that he would discover, true peace, true happiness and true love and that he would we well. Anyone in that mindset would have to become a better person.
It dawned on me one morning immediately after I woke up, that Trump would more than likely not change. I’m not ready to say ‘never change.’ We always have hope. Vaclav Havel said that hope is that thing that makes us carry on doing the right thing, regardless of the outcome.’ We cannot let go of our humanity.
So I decided to keep up my spiritual practice for him.
Now allow me to go out on a bit of a tangent – although it is relevant to what I am saying.
Oscar Romero was appointed Archbishop of in El Salvador in the ’70s.
He was chosen by the Vatican because he was conservative and upheld the teaching of the Magistrate. They were sure he would not rock the boat or speak out against the injustices in his country, or to speak out against the US for the part they were playing to keep the status quo or to speak for the poor.It was the death of a priest friend of his that changed everything for Romero. He was murdered by the military government. This caused a conversion of sorts in Romero’s thinking and actions. He became very outspoken of the injustices in his country and worked tirelessly for the poor.
He once said the if you decide to take the side of the poor, you have to accept that you will end up just like then – dead in a ditch. Romero was shot dead saying Mass in a hospital chapel, in March 1980.
This is a story of a man that did change. And it is what inspired me to take Trump to my heart and wish better things for him. Romero, however had many advantages that Trump does not have. He had a good family and a grounding in spirituality, even though it was somewhat clouded over until his conversion.
So as this recent election brought results that many did not want, either for the good of their country or the good of their world, we are again faced with this delimma. How are we individually going to respond?
I occurred to me the other day, while talking to a neighbour about these things, that I have had a far more privileged life that Trump has had. In that way, my heart can easily go out to him.
In Fields of Compassion by Judy Cannato (ISBN -13:978-1-933495-21-7 OR ISBN-10:1-933495-21-9). She speaks of Morphogenic Fields.
“What if we were to be intentional about about maintaining an emergent morphological field? What if we were to engage our energies as consciously as possible in order to influence and help manifest this new emerging consciousness, a consciousness rooted in the past yet filled with promise … for all life on our planet? Would this not be resonant with the call to live in freedom so that we might experience the depth of love? In such a critical moment in our own history, can we do anything but this?” (page 38)
There are so many more people in our world, as well as Trump, who need to be touched by this morphogenic field of compassion. All the leaders of countries who are waging war at present against their own people or against their neighbours. So many people, right now who are torturing people as I write this. So many… so many…
I think this is what we are doing in this Deep Time Network. Everyone has a part to play. The Universe has a role for each of us. I feel this is mine. I have no Degrees, Masters, Doctorates, etc. I have spent my life among people who have intellectual disabilities. In the Western world their lifestyles are improving slowly but surely, but there are still people in many countries around the world who are locked away and living terrible lives, all because they are being judged by the tyranny of normality. Many are being killed either before or after birth because of that judgement.
I think I do make a difference here and have done over the past 40 yrs. So that is where I can offer something and also intentionally maintain a morphogenic field of compassion for all those who are destroying life as we know it. I really do hope that they will be touched by love and choose to respond to it in a life giving way, for themselves, and for life on our planet.
It’s a real gift for me to be part of this group. Thank you all for being here.
Peace to each one.
Anne McKeon
Ireland -
Yesterday I started a Political Action Diary. Briefly, i pledge to
Learn – get factual information about whatever topics I will engage with
Speak – not be silent, learn to use social media
Act – in ways to be determined, at a minimum to donate to causes I believe in
Resist – also in ways to be determined
with Hope – that any going “backwards” will be temporary.
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Cataclysm: Our defining moment, standing at the threshold, the precipice , looking at a horizon, we often name as the Ecozoic era. My point in my invitation was not to name a recent event , e.g. election, as called “cataclysm”, but to name it as another event in the larger scheme of things, our context. A sign of the times of our overarching cataclysm…again , linking the word also with the more than human domain. The end of the Era, and taking a stance of welcoming for a new one, knowing deeply as Douglas shares, our own involvement in the chaos around us.
Thank you for sharing your reflections of the experiences of our recent moments and where you are turning for hope, and where you are putting your action. We each have personal pathways for ‘dealing’. In reading and listening with you, I am learning and expanding my own ways perhaps previously unattended. Also recognizing my own strengths, or preoccupations, trying to muddle through. Engaged, not as a Cartesian, but in the context of Cosmogenesis.
Although I knew art forms were evocative throughout my life, it is only when I began to experience myself within Cosmogenesis, that I was educed by them, brought forward and deepened in understanding, and understanding of becoming, the yin and yang of death and birth. I began to recognize an “act” each was doing to me. Each was educing a memory, which then was digested and placed into some kind of action in community.
I have been spending a lot of time walking and looking around recently, digesting. Engaging art forms, the fourfold wisdom conversation. In particular, memory. Memory as Mnemosyne , and her children, the muses. Art forms educe moments of cosmogenesis, or at least in retrospect, translation of experience, in the scheme of things is possible!!
Because I am still digesting recent experiences, I will share ones from the past. It is only recently that I realize how art forms reach across and flood my semipermeable membrane, through the thin veil, to teach me something.
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Where The Mind Is Without Fear (Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941)
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.Yeats and Tagore were two men in conversation with one another across continents and cultures, yet shared a common language to express their thoughts, poetry. Each shared the sense of poiesis. Each was in tune with the political and social struggles of their times (each man and country under British colonial rule, and still to attain ‘freedom’ from rule) Each poet points to another concept of freedom. Yeats nominated Tagore for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the win was the first for a non-Westerner to be awarded the prize. (1913). I find myself attuned to each of you knowing we share the sense of autopoiesis (self-making).
Years ago, I noticed many writers worrying about, or calling for religious institutional change. Referencing the poem of Yeats, they wondered whether the center, the institution they were writing about, could survive and buffet the changes. I, however was working with either patients in addiction counseling or those in spiritual direction, in conversation with people finding their center, interiority, site of emergence and becoming. In other words to hear the falconers call, come home, centered. Noticing this difference in interpretation, I suspected, came from a differing world view. Also around that time, I came upon an outdoor exhibit and sculpture with the name “Gauntlet” by Robert Cannon Gauntlet is the name of the glove used by a falconer. It was very large, perhaps 12 feet high. I was immediately struck by the ‘mudra’ quality of the hand posture, gripped into the vision of the human form becoming, covered in green, even resembling the Hindu childlike pose of baby Krishna at the base.
Thinking of this and particular other experiences of outdoor sculpture, another one comes to mind.
In the late 80’s or so I encountered this 1980 sculpture by J Seward Johnson named , The Awakening. It was installed at Haines Point and a place friends and I used to walk and picnic. It has since been moved from there. The encounter with it coincided with the process of the beginning of my own awakening, but I had no idea about ‘that’ at the time, I was just experiencing the struggle! The name of the sculpture did not resonate, although I was in the very same process. I was in some sense of denial. I could only name it ‘on the other side’.
The form shows a giant of a man embodied in Earth and in a great struggle to free himself. Years later I would encounter a poem that captures the statue in another aspect of the awakening process , being ‘woke’. I now see this giant remembering, they will never be ‘free ‘ from Earth, but is Earth on her own destiny, struggling no longer , surrendering and being held. Eyes on the horizon.
It’s a pivot of perspective poet Denis Levertov shares so clearly. As a swimmer, I know you can’t learn to float unless you enter a process of surrender. In stormy seas, I find it is a skill of somatic memory.
The Avowal
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.For me, this whole awakening has been coming into literacy, naming inchoate experiences held through time and now making sense. Experiences demanded of us by the Universe, to “come over here” , and then being able to be spoken of from the perspective of ‘here’. As Sarbmeet notes, ‘the solar system is cheering us on’ as are our ancestors, who have been, and our relations, human and non human who are still, suffering.
Thank you for sharing and may our ‘acts of contrition” and confession release us into new ways of being in communion together, inspired by Cosmogenesis.
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I am still coming to grips with the election results on this two week anniversary of a day that had been quite hopeful for me.
At the end of September, I realized that the race would be very close and that my state, Oregon, would not matter in the electoral map. So I decided to go to Pennsylvania for a month and throw myself into volunteer canvassing and whatever else was needed. My family was shocked, but they understood.
Arriving in Doylestown (Upper Bucks County) on Oct. 10, I was asked to lead a staging location in a nearby township in Upper Makefield on weekends through Election Day. It turned out to be the most intense professional experience of my life. And it was so incredibly positive and validating. So many volunteers from PA, NJ, NY, and all over the country showed up to knock on doors of strangers, talk about the candidates, and urge them to vote. It takes courage to do this, and a belief in the humanity of every person.
The turnout in Bucks County was 82% and the difference in votes between the two candidates was .2%.This in a county with many more registered Rs than Ds! I am sure this is in large part due to the Democrat’s extensive Get Out the Vote strategy. We have to remember that the many many people share the vision that Kamala Harris has for our country — about 74 million, in fact. The race was close. It was not a landslide. And I think that the number of voters who voted not-for-Trump was higher than those who voted positively for him. (I read that if 125,000 voters who voted third party in WI, MI and PA had voted Kamala instead, she would have won the electoral college but not the popular vote, and would have become president.)
From a deep time perspective (which is new to me), my reflection is that every being has agency. We are collectively building the future, deciding whether to grow this way or that way? Decisions matter, elections matter, everything matters. True, we are heading toward destruction on many levels, but one political path is more destructive than the other. Going forward, I will be paying close attention to politics everywhere, and showing up again when needed because I believe we are battling for the soul of the nation.
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Dear Barbara, Welcome to the deeptime perspective! As you note, each being has agency and is ensouled by cosmogenesis to dream. Great work you were doing animating people beyond your state and comfort level. Networking is a critical capacity for us to engage now, we can transcend boundaries and nations through our networking, even from our houses via zooms on internet. Nothing like being in community though, on the ground face to face. In the very end of our session last night we were talking about how a deeptime perspective helps flip and broaden the issues we aim for and believe in. Not only are we addressing the ‘soul of the nation’, we are addressing the soul of the Earth, the ancient concept of Animus Mundi. Through networking and collaborating on issues with oneanother , sharing our strengths within and across social and bioregional boundaries, we can come up with solutions together. In Florida, there is a group (inspired by Capra’s systems theory) that has been meeting since 2020, all through COVID each Monday (Douglas Bonar on this feed is a founding participant). Topics and issues are discussed with the intention of networking across the state to strategize ways forward when the leading powers are enacting legislature contradicting the flourishing of the Florida bioregion human and non human. It has been very inspiring to watch the unfoldment of inspiration across networks,..we can’t address issues from within our network silo’s . The strength is in the dynamic patterning of the whole. We have a long way to go to get deeptime perspectives proclaimed and enacted by politicians, but we can do anything on the ground locally, or internet. I often think of the Earth Charter. Many cities across Earth have adopted the Earth Charter (EC) and point to the various principles (crossing the spectrum of social justice and environmental sustainability) as goals for their communities. What has not been done very effectively, and needs to be done for effective enactment of the Charter is to ground communities first in the EC Preamble. The preamble states a ‘belief and declaration…We belong to a vast and evolutionary universe”…that is the paradigm shift needed to engage the principles in a sustained way. Am just mentioning this as an example of a network having a great set of principles and yet struggling to get them enacted by agencies adopting them. Our DT network has the strength in being able to foster the belief and self declaration of belonging to a vast and evolutionary universe. Each network has a strength and can potentiate the other. We need networks fostering the understanding, and then networks applying the understanding in their communities, all networking. In the scheme of our 13.8 BY Universe, as the song goes “We’ve only just begun…….”…Our Universal destiny is unfolding via Cosmogenesis through the Dream of the Earth. It will be wonderful to share our communal dreams and schemes networking in the Deeptime Cafe’s.
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On election day afternoon I attended a funeral service where the closing song was
Canticle of the Turning. The repeated last phrase in the refrain and verses were the
words “… and the world is about to turn!” Considering the election those words stirred
hope in my heart, anticipation, expectation and joy in my life. The long-awaited day had
come, only minutes away now until voting results would be coming in. I was ready.
Quicker than I thought the lightness of the evening turned into a dark night. Earlier than
planned I went to bed only to wake in the wee hours of morning, reach for my smart
phone and confirm the intuitive hunch lurching in my thoughts. I laid there for a while
ruminating on the future days of our country, our universe, my life – all cowering under a
shroud.Realizing my thoughts were going south and wanting desperately to get out of that lane,
I turned on the light, picked up the notebook resting on the bedside stand and started
writing whatever came to mind. My plan was to scribble night notes, read their briefings
in the morning and hopefully identify a meaningful path to follow into the future.
Initial unedited post-election thoughts:
. Do what is doable for me
. Be thankful for the Deeptime Network, Cosmology and Autocosmology learnings
. Delete non useful and space occupying computer programs and messages
. Live life focused and fully
. Avoid wasting energy on what I can do nothing about
. Go with the flow and pay attention
. Ride the horse in the direction it is going
. Make connections that give life to others
. Feel privileged and grateful to be living in these tumultuous times
. Relish the journey
. Sprinkle stardust on our Nation’s future; see where it goes, do what I can with what the
people have chosen
. Throw handfuls of peace and love into each thought, encounter and remembrance –
then let go
. Don’t waste time on negative energy
. Create a world of peace, love and joy as opportunities ariseReading these thoughts in the light of day reveals their primary focus to be on self-care.
Intentionally choosing thoughts to ponder and behaviors to make visible could become
launchpads for moving forward amid national turmoil and make a positive difference in
that movement.These are truly trying times. It is now a week plus out from Election Day. Decisions,
appointments, meetings and actions are causing our country to look less than familiar.
Potential turmoil looms at every turn but this chaos is not necessarily true for us. This is because we believe the words Thomas Berry spoke to Brian Swimme and by extension to all of us. “First and foremost, you are a cosmological being. Which means I’m the Universe in the mode of a human”. (Cosmogenesis p.212) Think about that because it makes a huge difference. We are not victims.Seeing the turmoil through this lens adds insight and assurance that what we are experiencing is a new civilization laboring to give birth. It is a crisis for sure, but one that urges us to use our authentic power to make responsible choices for bettering the space we touch by our lives. Autocosmology has given us the tools needed to make this happen and the skills to do the job
A fertile place to begin might be stepping back for a moment and taking a long graced- glance over what is before us. Then step closer to discern something personally doable to improve the situation. The chosen action may be large, small or in between. In any case its framework needs to hold authentic influence, accurate content and meaningful effectiveness for essential change to happen with consistency, coherence and continuity. Behaviors such as these have staying power and stand firmly in their own truth. Can we do that? Of courses we can. We are the chosen ones to be on planet earth at this moment. Our presence is our currency. Beyond doubt we have what it takes. It is ours to name, claim and tame. The Universe has our back.
Visualize yourself standing on a threshold gazing out into the depths of Universe space where a pinpoint of primal light steadily expands through billions of years pausing for a tender embrace as it reaches you. Surrounded in light and accompanied with courage and compassion, you walk forward with steady confidence on a secured path carefully designed to receive your footprints. Trusting the Universe and its ever-evolving primal star, you note signposts to be tended along the way … incompetence … injustice …
fear … corruption … distrust … turmoil … chaos … . You pay attention because “the world is about to turn”. -
Dear Deep-time Network,
I find this poem very helpful at this difficult time in our world.
I have not yet finished my auto-cosmology but am working on it.
Thank you all for your insights and support over these last several weeks.
Mimi Maloney
A SLEEP OF PRISONERS
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul we ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake!
-Christopher Fry
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I too was disappointed by the recent election results, and appropriately grieved. But not for long, not after practicing a daily devotional, part of which serves to differentiate the spiritual self from the natural self, and determining which is to centrally informs me. So differentiated, each “self” is indispensable in adapting to the domain and paradigm a person orients to, including a worldview that informs and wisely weighs and measures current events. In my particular faith, the former is more pragmatically oriented to “this world,” the other, to a more transcendent self of a higher order, referenced by its mentor as “My kingdom,” that of an Omega to come that Jesus and Teilhard envisioned as pertaining to now, but is mostly future-looking. Theren lies my experience, and ultimate hope, trust, and long view of history (deep-time). Let me explain.
One can know and be known intimately by their source in each domain, natural and spiritual. In the natural world of space-time, a “this world” created self (horizontally caused) develops via relationship to parents, family, intimates, and the non-human environment. Likewise with the spiritual self, a distinctive domain experienced via awakening to the spiritual plane (vertically causal), and those likewise awakened to same. Knowing and being known, caring and being cared about are essential to each domain, though divine relationship (and love) are different. Mind you, not in degree from the natural self, but in kind, primarily devoid of self-interest, fear, anxiety, desire, despair, and personal gain. Such is what makes it distinctly holy (whole), as opposed to more pedestrian as played out in personal relationships, systems, and in groupings like politics (or religion), each having its own “party spirit” or sectarian agenda that often lacks inclusivity, originates in unenlightened minds, and is therefore divisive.
In his teaching, Jesus makes reference to the spiritual self, gateway for a person (spirit-soul) accessing and knowing divinity as Source and being known by same intimately in the largest (cosmic) dome of meaning. That is, differentiating “my kingdom” from “this world” in human consciousness is as different as day and night. By this definition (quote below), many are in poverty, devoid of participating in the highest order of reality. In either instance of self, natural or spiritual, having neither intimacy or knowledge of one’s source is impoverishing, and therefore to one’s disadvantage in many ways, primarily in emotional security and deep-time perspective (seeing) as Teilhard underscored. Such is a buckler or firewall against the intrusion of all lower level “viruses” or impediments in thought, perception, and integral unity.
“But my kingdom is within and all around you. When you know yourselves, then shall you be known, and you shall know that you are the sons of the living Father (Source). But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty” (Thomas, saying 24).
In examining his life and teachings carefully, I’m convinced that Jesus came not to found a new religion, but rather to END all religions, particularly their forms, rituals, and ceremonies. Instead introducing a radical presence of Spirit within and all-around things. According to Teilhard, such embeds in matter organically (spirit-matter) transcending time, space, and place. More importantly, it’s spiritual realization is not horizontally evolved. Rather, its vertically implanted in each spirit-soul, freely accessible to activation in personal experience. “Vertically implanted” implies an organic component (incarnation) that inhabits space-time, Spirit as the highest part of matter. Like the two sides of a coin, said Teilhard, both are linked together into a spirit-matter dyad awaiting realization. Teilhard did so referencing the apostle Paul’s epistles, who defined Jesus as “he in whom all things consist and hold together” (Colossians 1:17), and “he fills all things everywhere with himself” (Ephesians. 1:23). Which means the Christ is both person and an unidentified energy spread upon the face of Earth and the cosmos. In order to name this elemental substance and cohering nature of said mystery substance, all that remains for those who follow Jesus, Teilhard, Thomas Berry, is for them to round out the juridical and moral components of the original message, and with the aid of modern science, identify the third or elemental nature of Jesus, which is also the third nature of ourselves, and the very substance of all created form (panentheism).
So I ask, assuming that the religio-scientific dots are already in place for a grand synthesis, and at present they seem to be, then why reinvent the synthesis wheel that Teilhard affirmed already includes he who claims to be their spiritual axis?
As for this mystery substance (Spirit) being “freely accessible”: Only systems and in-groups require conditional belonging via membership, dues, group-think, clerics, priestcraft, certificates of attainment, denominations, organizational sects, etc. Jesus said “member-ship” is located first in the dis-membered (disconnected) individual, and one must first look for, come to, activate, develop, and practice it there — out-picturing it in thought, comportment, and service. And I might add, in cosmology synthesis models. Furthermore, consider the following: Jesus and Teilhard might further ask wandering post-moderns in search of same (a cosmotheology) to ponder the following question, “Since in your own separate scientific and religious cosmologies, God and the cosmos are understood as one and undivided in origin and essence, how can ONE be divided into different disciplines and cosmologies?”
“I am he who exists from the undivided” (or unitive consciousness) — Jesus, Gospel of Thomas.
I underscore “freely accessible” because in the purest since, ultimate truth sets a person TOTALLY free, binding no one to itself once liberated; not to any organization, creed, cleric, priestcraft, ceremony, dues, sanctions, memberships, by-laws, charters, etc. Not that such things are negative in themselves, but often act as mediating, denaturing, and hindering agents and influences substituting for the free, direct, and immediate experience of same in the spirit-soul. Further, unvarnished Spirit gives of itself freely, asking nothing in return, which is why Jesus used the metaphors of sunshine, rain, and the air we breathe to illustrate the abundance and availability of same universally. God, after all, is everywhere. (It’s also where he downloaded his teachings and integrated parables from.) These natural elements act upon things ubiquitously, without discrimination, conditions, or qualification as to their recipients. By history, such teachings only became sectarian, distorted, even corrupt by the divisive conditioned consciousness of mankind, and the religions of the empire (politics), each looking to compete and elevate themselves over the others. In reality, Jesus, Paul, and Teilhard proposed an ORGANIC definition to creation itself in order to circumvent same, one that applies universally, and complements the moral and juridical components of Jesus’s teachings.
Said Jesus, in more modern speak, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy. Ditching God’s command and taking up the latest fads. You scratch out God’s Word and scrawl a whim in its place” (Mark 7:6-13).
Thus, asked Teilhard, “Who shall give us the meta-Christianity we’re all looking for?” Some 75 years later, his salient question has yet to be answered in these post-modern times. Mainly because it won’t come by and through an organized religion, an intellectualized academia, or a left-brained scientism hardly representative of what Jesus taught as reflected in nature, or experienced in mystical awareness.
Consider this historical (deep-time) view of divine principles congealing in human consciousness since the first axial age, 800 BCE to 200 BCE: Spiritual notions of divine truth, freedom, liberty, justice, and equality have been infiltrating human consciousness ever since, as far back as ancient Greece. Ripening in the Christ and Buddha, it was reflected in England’s Magna Carta, on through the American, French, and South American Revolutions, and later the Industrial Revolution. All of them out-pictured a changed state of consciousness culminating in more and more freedom and equality for people, eventually liberating them from all kinds of limitations, those of the natural self (egoic), the environment, disease, poverty, transportation, and technology. All of it consonant with the ancient wisdom traditions of the Bible, the advent of the Christ in human consciousness, and Teilhard’s evolving notions of the noosphere, centration, and convergence of all knowledge along unitive lines, and the spiritual differentiation of self, onward toward Omega.
So yes, like many, I was troubled by the last election results. But not for long. With the above as backdrop and worldview, I became quickly free of same. And that, despite the prevalence of democratic freedom currently giving way to autocratic trending in our land, and worldwide. I get my freedom elsewhere, even if here placed in chains. There is something to be said for revisiting the ancient wisdom literature that offers more of a complete explanation on the origin of life, the nature of God, constituency of Spirit, of the spirit-soul and spirit-matter infiltrating awareness over deep-time, including historical themes and trends to the contrary, than all other religious traditions combined. That is, if it’s carefully and properly studied and understood in their original context, devoid of their degrading historical overlays.
At present, it seems that DTN lacks a coherent informing cosmotheology, one that combines a perennial theology and valid scientific principles. Why discard the teacher, teachings, and Spirit from whence Teilhard drew his ideas and inspirations?
Again, why reinvent the wheel whose axil (axis), or Alpha, has been in place at all scales, micro to macro, since the beginning of the Big Bang/Creation? Of a truth, the answer to the synthesis mystery, Omega (the end), is to be found in the beginning (Alpha). The Master said so.
“I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22: 13-15).
A contingent of DTN members listened to a portion of it firsthand last April, in Holmdel, NJ.
Joe Masterleo
[See the author’s DTN blog on the CMBR discovery of Penzias and Wilson of same for further synthesis details, posted last April]
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