By: Giles Hutchins
We are living through a supreme moment of our evolution of consciousness. The old worldview has had its day. This was a worldview of organizations, societies and individuals perceived as competitive self-maximizing units embroiled in an evolutionary process of selfish ascendency where we either dominate or become dominated.
Our emerging worldview perceives a deeper inter-relatedness of our selves immersed within a sentient sea of sacredness where mind and matter are entwined.
Quantum scientists now concur with what mystics, shamans, philosophers and prophets have known for millennia: the ground-of-all-being is an infinite, intangible spirit infusing everything, inherent throughout Nature and Cosmos. This Sophia (or primordial wisdom) is within and all around us. As author and Jungian analyst Anne Baring notes, "We need to create a sanctuary within ourselves to listen to its guidance."
This 'new story' of our sacred humanity immersed within a sacred world is emerging somatically within and socially all around us. As we consciously open up to the metaphysical field of life within and all around us, we begin to re-member our ground-of-being, our common ground.
It is this common ground we now urgently need to turn our attention to if we are to have any hope of successfully allowing new springs of civilization to flow.
Time is no longer on our side; we are up against it, and our problems run deep and wide.
Whether it is spiraling climate catastrophe, deepening biodiversity destruction, endemic social pathology, fanatical religious fundamentalism or disenchanted and disenfranchised youth, the root cause to our plethora of problems is a self-reflexive sense of separateness which creates psychic atrophy, symptoms of which are dis-ease, anxiety, egotism, individualism and materialism.
At present, we are engaged in a kind of deluding neurosis with devastating ramifications for human society and the wider fabric of life on Earth. And, our ingrained approaches to education, economics and organizational management are, in the main, infected by this neurosis and so exacerbating the acculturation of our insanity - what Albert Hoffman called a "Western entelechy neurosis" and what Albert Einstein called "an optical delusion of consciousness."
No longer can we afford to apply this same corrupting logic to our solutions. We must think and relate in radically different ways. In short, we must shift our consciousness individually and collectively. The good news is, this shift in consciousness is in line with our true nature and is a simple - yet not necessarily easy - case of us remembering our humanity.
Through our intention, we can open up beyond the narrowing confines and restricting razor-gaze of our left-brained ego-awareness into a richer contextual world where we find our true inter-relational nature immersed within the deeper wisdom of Nature. We can learn to retrain ourselves to see beyond the illusion of separation through our own intention and quality of attention.
Tried-and-tested approaches such as phenomenology, shadow work, ecological psychology, Theory U, heart awareness, somatic experiencing, contemplative practices, shamanic journeying, Way of Council, applied improvisation, expressive artful practices, and more, all aid a deeper consciousness within and all around us to flow through our 'bodyminds' - the wisdom of Nature, aka Sophia.
Our shift in consciousness can be seen as a joyous art of love-making, fertilizing our responsive self-awareness within the deeper receptivity of Nature - a yin yang communion - allowing for a coherence of inner and outer worlds even if only for the briefest of moments to begin with.
The good news is, this 'new consciousness' has been traversed by many minds already. While today's challenges and opportunities require us to apply this consciousness in novel and creative ways, there is much we can learn from ancient wisdom traditions and great minds before us.
Aristotle for instance - a mind often referred to as foundational to Western civilization, science and philosophy - understood Nature as an active and creative outpouring of spirit infusing all things. He knew that the truly ethical life is not found through obedience to exteriorized social commandments, organizational dictum or cultural charters but is found through a conscious attunement - a gnosis - of one's self within Nature's wisdom. Here, the ethical life is lived by being in touch with one's true nature whereupon we attune with the divine ground of being within and all around us.
A new coalescence of human nature and sacred Nature is happening in our midst, a metamorphosis of consciousness no less. And so we begin to walk the path of our destiny; through small conscious steps, inter-relations, thoughts, words and deeds we re-member our humanity; nothing more nothing less.
You can access a podcast series on this shift in our midst.
These are some of the themes explored and celebrated by UK based social enterprise Pioneers for Change. Their inaugural 6-month Fellowship kicked off on 23 and 24 March, 2015 in London. Pioneers for Change is an initiative of Adessy Associates.
About Giles Hutchins
Giles applies twenty years business experience to the emergence of new business logic inspired and in harmony with nature. Follow Giles blogs or facebook community and tweets @gileshutchins