Paradigm of Aliveness
We regard the universe as deeply alive and conscious by nature. In a living universe, our sense of subtle connection and participation with life around us is the basis for a compassionate and cooperative approach to living.
Scientists are not the only ones these days pointing out the fact that our planetary civilization is hugely entropic: we are burning up useable stuff at ever accelerating rates. China's latest move to reduce exporting rare minerals used for all our tech toys from iPads to cell phones is just our most recent reminder that a lot of the Earth's resources we are pumping, mining, chopping, consuming, burning, eroding and evaporating will not be available to us in the future. The world economy is built on this irreversible loss of useable energy and the latest global forecasts indicate that a number of developing countries are really cranking up to get in on the profits to be made in the entropy game. Even if we didn't have residual toxins, pollution and climate impact, we would still be heading towards scarcity of useable resources. Some, the Pentagon among them, predict that the next big conflicts will not be over ideology, religion or land per se but over water, gas, minerals and, potentially, food.
We have told ourselves that the road out of ruinous poverty and toward sustainable nationhood with the capital resources to fund healthcare, education, housing and employment is more trade and more consumption -- sell more stuff, use more stuff, burn more stuff and you will be on your way to thriving.
There are theorists who argue that the only way to stop this deficit consumption of Earth's useable energy is to redesign the entire global economic order so that it moves from entropy to entropic balance. Systems that balance their energy loss with the intake of fresh energy maintain equilibrium. Nature is our teacher here because it does a brilliant job at using life and the product of life to create more life and sustain life to an incredible degree of abundance. Until we came along, raided the abundance and created huge entropy deficits!
I cannot tell you whether we can employ greening strategies at the kind of speed necessary to make proper use of natural flow like wave, wind and solar radiation at a scale needed for 7 billion to 8 billion people. Or that we can rapidly ramp up recycling initiatives that not only recycle our trash but rebuild our homes, offices, furniture, clothes and vehicles, etc. If it were possible to reach negentropic equilibrium by fast-track greening strategies it would require a fundamental moral choice to redesign the present so that we did not place our unsustainable deficit energy consumption on the backs of future generations and seriously compromise their capacity to survive. But this is where I go out on a limb.
If, in fact, the moral construct was as simple and as cogent as "unto the seventh generation," as conveyed in Native American traditions, then we would have a liberating directive to end the injunction to make myopic choices based on the need for immediate profit. I contend that we live in a moral universe and that moral principles are axial templates within consciousness itself: they are the master templates of wisdom; they are the codes for Nature's abundance; they are the latent possibilities for endless ingenuity and creativity; and they are design fractals which guide the evolution of higher consciousness in human beings.
At root, what is needed is our moral development as a species and not more dazzling displays of cleverness funded by greed or desperate measures to correct the negative impact of on-going behavior that is essentially devoid of conscience. Moral development is not about petty strictures but about our greatest asset, which is harnessing the power of imagination in service to ideals worthy of those who truly care about the future. Life itself emerges from principles of order, beauty and truth and when we attempt to hijack those principles we create disorder and invert truth and beauty.
Consciousness is still our most spectacular resource which will open up more energy for our use than we ever imagined possible. But it is not for sale, its highest resources, which maybe limitless, are only available to those dedicated to serve, not steal from, the evolving story of life.
Consciousness is not a neutral playground where we create our own realities. It could never be coherent if that were the case and it would devolve into a universe of competing realities. Dictatorship is precisely the form of subjective manifestation that divorces itself from moral principles with dire consequences. We do not hand over control of the household to a 2-year-old and acclaim the power of the infant to create a reality! But when one returns to the notion that it is inherently a moral universe then there are consequences to subjectively induced states of mind and forms of action. The moral core of the universe produced the exquisite balance for life on Earth with its harmony and unfathomable beauty. Only a moral imagination can restore what our immoral greed and flagrant excess has wrecked.
Francis Bacon is the one who said that we must "put Nature on the rack" and torture her until she reveal her secrets. Well we have done that and the reality we have created has resemblances to hell. But the reverse is also true: Honor and serve the Holy Order of Nature, and vow to serve the cause of Life, and she will let us know that our entropy issues are but a speck of dust in the ocean of her creativity.
The universal human is a name for the next stage of human evolution. It may eventually become our name for the new species that is now emerging from within so many of us. We have arrived here passing through many other stages well recognized by scientists: Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neandertal, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens sapiens. There is no reason to suppose that evolution stopped when it achieved our big brain!
In fact, there is evidence that for the past few thousand years, there has been emerging out of Homo sapiens sapiens, a more universal human. This new type of human began to appear about 5000 years ago in Israel, India, Persia, Greece, China, the Middle East. We identify some of these humans as Isaiah, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Jesus, Mohammed and others, advanced human beings who gave fuller expression to the Great Creating Process in themselves. In these people the Consciousness Force Itself broke through into human awareness. Indeed, these advanced beings founded the religions and the ethical systems of the world, calling all of us to evolve to a higher state.
But most of us could not experience what the evolved humans did. The teachings of the originators were codified and became dogma for those who could not experience the truth themselves. And often this dogma fostered obedience to outside authorities, rather than inspiring people to recognize the great Source within.
Now, during our current planetary crises, these old codified systems are breaking down and changing. Many people are leaving organized religion behind and experiencing the awakening of Spirit within themselves. They are listening to the voice of their Higher Self, the One Voice calling us all to grow in consciousness and to recreate our world. The Era of the Holy Spirit incarnating has begun.
In this awakening it has become clear to many that it is self-conscious humans feeling separate from each other and from nature, who are threatening our world. At the same time, if we look closely, there is also arising, for the first time, a more universal humanity.
Our crisis is inducing the birth of a more universal human.
We are the crossover generation moving from one phase of evolution to the next! Although barely perceptible, as were the earliest humans in the pre-human world, a young Homo universalis is emerging everywhere, in every culture, faith, and background. The signs of our emergence as universal humans include an unconditional love for the whole of life; a powerful, irresistible passion to unite with Spirit within; and a deep heart-felt impulse to connect with others and cocreate a world equal to our love and our capacities.
As we pass through our crises, as we successfully birth ourselves into a more universal humanity, we will emerge capable of co-evolving with nature and cocreating with Spirit. We will be able to solve our problems. We will be able to cocreate a new world.
During these transition times it is important to stabilize our consciousness as universal humans. We can do this by practicing authentic relationship with others of similar intent and reminding one another of who we are. When we intend together, we build a collective field of resonance that can support our conscious evolution. Our job is far easier when we offer each other the support of staying awake together.
For more on the universal human, see Barbara’s books: Emergence: the Shift from Ego to Essence and her soon-to-be-published The Secret Journal: How to Birth the Universal Human in Yourself.
Excerpted from Your Soul's Compass: What Is Spiritual Guidance? By Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., and Gordon Dveirin, Ed.D. Copyright © 2007 by Joan Borysenko and Gordon Franklin Dveirin. Published by Hay House, Inc.
Through the ages, religions have sought to answer questions central to the human condition. Tapping the wisdom of twenty-seven spiritual leaders—aptly described as Sages— from across the spectrum of faiths, Joan Borysenko and Gordon Dveirin explore concepts of spiritual guidance in Your Soul's Compass. In this excerpt, the notion of the felt sense is explored.
Looking for signs
Shaman/poet Oriah Mountain Dreamer told us a story about something that happened when she was a young woman. An acquaintance was trying to decide whether or not to go to Mexico with a man she'd recently met. A truck passed by with the word Mexico written on the side, and the woman took it as a sign that she should make the trip. Off she went, only to get beaten up by her companion, who proved to be untrustworthy.
Oriah's advice about signs is to use them as questions to sit with in contemplation, rather than accepting them as pat answers. Spiritual guidance rarely comes as a given, we've learned, but more often as an invitation to feel for the movement of Spirit.
What greater wisdom does a particular life event suggest, and how can we best integrate its teaching into our lives? Some of the most common ways that the Sages discussed feeling for the movement of Spirit were by attending to felt sense (meaningful bodily sensations such as goose bumps, for instance, or feelings of peace, excitement, aliveness or anxiety), intuition, dreams, signs and synchronicities.
Everything Provides Guidance
While the Old Testament God appears to Moses as a burning bush, spiritual guidance is usually a lot more subtle. The counterpart to God the Father is God the Mother. In Judaic mysticism she's known as Shechinah ... wisdom itself. And rather than being up there, she's in here. In you. In me. In the earth, the sky, the water and the wind. She is in joy and in sorrow, in success and failure. Shechinah is the life force itself and can offer her wisdom in an infinite number of changing forms.
Like many Friends (what Quakers call one another), [Quaker educator Patricia Loring] stresses that whatever guise the guidance may take, it's the quality of our attention and our willingness to listen with an open mind and heart that creates the conditions for recognizing and following it: “Spiritual guidance ... involves an ever-increasing level of openness and awareness. Over a lifetime, we are led to open in the direction of absolutely everyone and everything around us as a potential messenger of God—a goal toward which we reach all our lives without expecting to reach it.”
Opening to everyone and everything around us requires feline sensitivity. A cat's whiskers continually taste the air; ears orient to the subtlest sound. Muscles expand and contract in poetic harmony with the changing environment ... not as it was a moment ago, but as it is now, and now, and now again. The tapetum (reflective layer) of the eyes creates visual acuity matched only by a cat's uncanny inner acuity. Ever think about getting out the cat carrier for a trip to the vet and your precious pet stages a disappearing act worthy of Houdini. How does it know?
We asked our Sages a similar question: How do you know? What is your personal experience of guidance? Unlike cats, who tune in to multiple channels of knowing, most of us humans have a much more limited bandwidth. No two Sages answered the same way. Nonetheless, some had preferred methods for listening deeply to their lives to discern the wisest direction. Others spoke about using multiple channels to receive guidance. You may have your own methods, or perhaps reading about the experiences we've chosen to highlight here will help you recognize more about your own process of making choices and living with purpose and direction.
The Felt Sense
Sometimes you're so much in your head that you don't notice what's going on in your body— a subtle range of inner sensation called the felt sense that can give you an intuitive read of a situation. When you're thinking about whether or not to accept a job, how do you decide? One way is to list the pros and cons and consider the opportunities for advancement, the pay, the benefits and so forth.
But rational thought alone often won't tell you the whole story. There's a more wide-ranging system at your disposal that includes tuning in to bodily sensations. Philosopher and psychotherapist Dr. Eugene Gendlin discovered that the difference between people who did well in psychotherapy and those who didn't was the ability of the former to pay attention to this interior information, which he called the felt sense.
Tuning in to Inner Wisdom
A young woman goes on a blind date with a man who comes highly recommended by her own mother. Even though he's unfailingly polite and kind, she feels slightly restless and tense all evening—queasy even. Something just feels “off” inside. She ignores these feelings, since he's intelligent and good looking, has a great pedigree, makes plenty of money, and seems to like her. On their second date, he takes her to his apartment and tries to rape her. She barely escapes. A form of wisdom different from thought was sending danger signals through the felt sense, but she chose to ignore it—at her peril, as it turned out. And, guess what ... that young woman was me.
Several years later, when I was a young scientist doing cancer research at the Tufts University School of Medicine, I paid attention to felt sense. I was a competent medical researcher with an enviable track record, and in academia this meant that my experiments yielded interesting results published in fine scientific journals and that my grants got funded. When I wasn't in the lab, I taught histology—the microscopic anatomy of cells, tissues and organs— to medical and dental students. Teaching and doing research was rewarding, but a vague sense of unease started to grow.
One day a phone call came from the National Cancer Institute to let me know that not only had my latest grant proposal been funded, but it had such a high-priority score that they were wondering whether I'd like more money for new equipment. When I burst into tears, the funding agent was touched. She thought that I was thrilled to get the good news, but the reality was that the grant suddenly felt like a three-year prison sentence. The felt sense of misery and disappointment in the face of seemingly great news was an invitation to sit with the question of what I did want to do with my career, since what I didn't want was suddenly clear.
Felt sense came into the picture again when I made the highly rational decision to attend Tufts University School of Dental Medicine when my grant research was complete. Why dental school, you ask? The reasons were eminently practical. My husband at that time, Miroslav Borysenko, also taught at the medical and dental schools, and as a faculty spouse, I would get my tuition waived. The university also offered to let me keep teaching histology and to pay me well. Our two boys were still young, and I reasoned that practicing dentistry part-time would make me more available to them while still generating a good income.
All systems seemed to be go, and there was an easy flow. The only problem was that I started waking up at night with butterflies in my stomach. The felt sense of anxiety and “wrongness” grew. After sitting with it for a month, I reluctantly concluded that dentistry wasn't my dharma (the path in life that leads both to spiritual growth and purposeful living) ... or you might be sitting in my chair right now...
Opening the Way
I'd given up trying to figure out what to do with my life and was receptive to whatever might emerge. One day the phone rang ... but I was the one who made the call.
I'd picked up a medical journal, and there was an article written by my former mentor Herbert Benson, M.D., with whom I'd done research in graduate school. The article was about the physiological benefits of meditation—what he and his colleague Keith Wallace, Ph.D., dubbed the relaxation response.
I'd been meditating for years and gave Dr. Benson a call to catch up on what he was doing. As fortune—or guidance—would have it, he'd written a grant proposal to retrain physicians and medical researchers in the newly emerging field of behavioral medicine. It had been funded that very morning. He offered me one of the two available fellowships, and as the Quakers would say, “the way opened.” I took the position, went back to Harvard, and was able to use my research background to help people with cancer and other illnesses by cofounding a mind/body clinic with Dr. Benson and other colleagues.
It's important to recognize that the opportunity for such meaningful work didn't appear out of thin air. It was the result of a clear intention to follow guidance, a willingness to wait until the way revealed itself, and a strong desire to match my work in the world with my inner journey to God.
JOAN BORYSENKO, Ph.D., is an internationally known speaker on spiritual integrative medicine, and the mind/body connection. She has a doctorate in medical sciences from Harvard Medical School, is a licensed clinical psychologist, is the author of many books, and is the cofounder of the Claritas Institute for Interspiritual Inquiry and director of its Interspiritual Mentor Training Program.
GORDON DVEIRIN, Ed.D., is the president of Dveirin & Associates, a consulting firm on organization and human development. His interests include enhancing the social, emotional and spiritual lives of children; training leaders; and facilitating new visions of possible global futures. Cofounder of the Claritas Institute for Interspiritual Inquiry and its Interspiritual Mentor Training Program, he is coauthor (with his wife, Joan Borysenko) of Saying Yes to Change.