“Happiness is as a butterfly, which when pursued,
is always beyond our grasp,
But which, if you sit down quietly,
may alight upon you.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I have always loved the above quote for its simple truth. And yet with the passage of time I have come to realise that in these few words is the seed for so much more. I have come to realise that my happiness, and yours, is world peace. For in our fulfillment is our peace.
Many of us are aware of how much the world is changing and how the speed of that change is getting faster and faster. Many of us have read frightening reports about the consequences of such change and the urgent necessity to do some thing about it before it is all too late! Many of us are appalled that we are still making war on each other in the name of peace even as we know there is no longer a peaceful solution in war. And many of us are heartbroken at how we still continue to destroy our beautiful planet, its flora and fauna.
Some of us realise that there is no solution to any of these situations in our current paradigm. A paradigm shift is required that re-visions our entire way of being. Whatever new methodologies we may come up with, at this stage, they can only be translative - translating something wrong to right, or at least better. The difficulty is that our right is someone else's wrong and so the conflict continues. My view conflicts with yours in the classroom, the boardroom and the bedroom; an Israeli world view conflicts with Palestinian, Northern Ireland's to southern, and East with West.
To re-vision our way of being requires transformation, not translation. Transformation shifts our consciousness and therefore the course of evolution. This is not simply human evolution but the evolution of the universe. Indeed, some of us realise that this is our fundamental purpose as homo sapiens sapiens - the creature that knows that it knows, as we named ourselves.
Our difficulty is that any intention to fix the world is translative because it is based on fixing a perceived wrong to a perceived right, and we are back on the merry-go-round of different points of view. Transformation requires a paradigm shift that recognises there is nothing wrong - ever.
With the advent of quantum physics we have been able to investigate the nature of reality and discovered that the physical is not physical. We have come to realise that consciousness is all there is and the material world arises out of consciousness much like a giant hologram. More and more, we have come to realise the extraordinary intelligence evolving this material world, from the Big Bang birthing stars and billions of galaxies to the intricate detailing of seahorses, migrating birds and the human brain.
It is interesting to recognise that in the spectrum of intelligence the human brain with its human intelligence has only been around for the last 0.0003% of time, and that figure is probably generous. Human intelligence is very young, perhaps explaining why we appear to be causing so much damage. Much like a child hugging the puppy to death.
Now, however, I suggest we have arrived at a time in evolution that such ignorance can no longer be an excuse. Not that an excuse is needed. The truth is this intelligence is not accidental or part-time. Nothing could have happened, be it the extinction of dinosaurs, the eruption of volcanoes or the most insane and damaging human behaviour, without it being informed by intelligence. Consciousness or universal intelligence is all there is, and therefore, must inform the entire hologram.
What kind of paradigm shift is needed? It is a shift that has everything to do with how we experience ourselves in the world. It is a shift from a consciousness of separation to a consciousness of unity.
Over the years humans have experienced different social and ideological forms of self-identity. For instance, fifty thousand years ago, we barely had a concept of a distinct self. Self-identity was intrinsically linked to the tribe. Not only did each member identify with the group, but they also identified with the earth, the sky, the stars at night and the prey they hunted during the day. Today, individuality is fundamental to the modern concept of self which means we think we are separate from each other and everything else. As such we experience consciousness in terms of separation and behave according to the intelligence of the ego. And most of us know our intelligence is based on using only a very small amount of our brain, only 10%, and some say even less!
Today modern science rests on the same premise found in ancient spiritual wisdom. There is only one reality with no separation - a seamless whole that exists in an eternal and infinite way. According to science, even time and space are constructs of consciousness with no final reality. The only reality, the ultimate reality is the intelligence that we call consciousness.
Spirituality is about the wholeness of all of life. In our materialistic culture we have tended to think of spirituality as unrealistic and impractical. Now science has confirmed it is the most authentic and rigorous point of view we can have. Indeed, spiritual intelligence is the primary and ultimate intelligence.
Let us take this further. The universe is a continuous stream of consciousness, from the formation of galaxies, gravity holding them in place, stars bursting asunder and, in their explosion, the scattering of all the elements that will later form life on this third rock from the sun. As a continuous and undivided stream of consciousness, the evolution of the universe is essentially and primarily a spiritual event.
The evolution of the universe, everything that has gone before, has forged the capacity for self-reflection as it appears in humanity. This is our fundamental purpose - to make explicit the implicit truth of the indivisible unity of life. The new paradigm requires a shift from our belief in separation to the truth of unity. Your wellbeing is my wellbeing.
To see ourselves as a means whereby intelligence evolves furthers an awareness of our intuitive intelligence, our spiritual intelligence. We begin to evolve without the fear and damage caused by our belief in separation. But remember, even this event is the impersonal and self-organising function of consciousness.
The difficulty is the deeply personal experience of being me, and a me that feels very separate from you. This is the terrain of transformation - the transformation of what we fear into what we long for. For without the realisation of happiness in these terms we are forever trapped in a sense of me with my very personal fears, and therefore my very personal point of view.
In this vital area of transformation, we do not have a meaningful language. Much that is referred to as transformation is merely another form of translation. Many modern theories and disciplines are based on holistic and integrative structures and yet we continue to behave with little regard for each other or the world. So powerful is this belief in separation that even when we know the truth, confirmed by the greatest thinkers of the day, we still live as though separate.
In spite of our scientific insights and spiritual wisdoms we have not yet attained a consciousness of unity. To this end, to further a narrative of transformation, I offer an allegory - an allegory that I call love's alchemy. It represents a transcendence of our usual way of being to being all that we may be. It invites our full participation in the rich experience life could be without fear.
Alchemy is the process of transformation. The medieval meaning of the word refers in particular to the transformation of base metals into gold. Here, the word refers to the transformative power of love.
Love is too subtle and too mysterious to be defined, but is used here in its most powerful sense. Hidden at the heart of the entire cosmic story is a great mystery. In the most paltry way, it may be alluded to with the words: Love is the principle of the universe. More and more in today's wisdom, there is growing speculation from cosmologists to psychologists that love is the unifying principle in the universe. Mystics have been saying this for thousands of years.
Love is the principle whereby consciousness is made manifest. What does this mean? To get a feeling of what these words mean, use your imagination and travel back, at the speed of light, to the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago. Don't try to imagine the Big Bang, because it is beyond imagining with our very young human minds. Simply skip over this momentous event to the other side, before there was anything - no time, no space, no place, no thing. Indeed, nothing at all. This is what we might call consciousness with absolutely nothing to be conscious of. Yes, it is infinitely and eternally peaceful. Stay in this blissful nothingness for a while.....until you notice the longing. A deep, profound longing to know. A yearning to feel. A desire to hold and embrace something infinitely precious. To experience the mystery. To connect one to another. To relate in the most vital way. To dance with joy and exuberance. To shine like a billion stars cascading into the heavens. This is the power of love, a dynamic force that projects the universe into existence. Love is the motive for existence. It motivates consciousness to express exquisitely in raindrops, roses and whiskers on kittens. It is our attraction to what we know as happiness, peace, truth and beauty.
The allegory of love's alchemy is to awaken a sensibility that enables our participation to advance, not disadvantage, possibly even end, the life story of our beautiful planet. The urgency is not in how much harm we have done, but the point of no return that we may arrive at, and so write ourselves out of this wonderful story of evolution with an unsatisfactory and untimely death. We may devolve from the creature that knows that it knows to the creature that doesn't care that it knows. Its care is a brutal one for its survival at all costs.
We must learn to care and this is only possible as we attend what we fear. In today's world we cannot afford our fears any longer. Like the worst possible bank run we are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of preposterous proportions based on a belief that is not true. The allegory of love's alchemy aims to awaken an awareness of what is true in the most practical fashion As long as our intrinsic unity remains a wisdom in a book on a shelf, we will continue to live our lives ignorant of the untapped possibilities that exist in this vast body of intelligence, beyond that of our egos.
Imagine our world with no fear. To imagine a world with no fear is to invite the possibility of a world with no fear. Love's alchemy refers to just such a world. Its primary purpose is to transform fear. Allegorically, our fears are used as the base material, the lead, in the alchemical fires of transformation. What emerges is a golden era in our history where peace and happiness are not only possible but necessary. In this way love's alchemy affirms our desire to live fully and meaningfully, not merely to survive. And to live fully where there is real happiness, not just the instant gratification we indulge in with so little fulfillment.
Through the narrative of love's alchemy we learn that we are the alchemists. This is important as it removes the power from the few - our political and religious leaders, our CEOs and generals - and places it firmly where it belongs, in the consciously evolving body of humanity. Most of our leaders today are not leaders. They are puppets reacting out of the old paradigm 'divide and rule'. Their power rests on maintaining the regime of 'apartheid' which means separation. If we didn't know it before we now know that our survival rests on the global wellbeing of all - not just humans but trees and animals and fish too. Perpetuating an ideology of separation only perpetuates more fear and, therefore, more violence. As the alchemist, I may not have the resources of a president, with armies and administrations, but I have the resource of intelligence. This is the intelligence that birthed billions of galaxies, and rises and sets the sun everyday. Aligned with such intelligence we become powerfully proactive, tapping into unforeseen possibilities informed by the power of love. With our egocentric superiority (which is also our inferiority) out of the way, we may more truly fulfill and evolve in our highly creative role as the thinking animal.
We now know that nothing is as it appears to be, and as it appears to be is only a point of view in an endless spectrum of possible view points. Our challenge is to go beyond our past experience, beyond the conditioned and habitual, beyond the expected and familiar, beyond the inevitable and predictable. We have to find an altogether new dimension of safety; a safety informed by unity. Thus will the ideology of the survival of the 'fittest', strongest, richest be recognised as incoherent and fundamentally counterproductive. Thus will the ideology of 'the greater good of all' inform our strategies, structures and developments in our families, societies governing bodies and states. The paradigm shift is to realise we cannot fix anything out of the limited intelligence of our egos. Indeed the shift is to recognise there is no intrinsically separate me and you to fix anything and in this awareness we align ourselves with intelligence intelligently. In this magnificent story of evolution, we evolve to a spiritually intelligent understanding that there is nothing wrong - ever. Now this is a self-fulfilling prophecy worth fulfilling, and it is our conscious awareness that is the matrix of its fulfillment. When pursued, it is always beyond our grasp. But if we sit down quietly, it may alight upon us.
With great love and respect,
Sky
