add to
following para. what RHEA suggests ... altho' hers just says
this IS the new story. .. maybe in autobio quote, etc.
What characteristics would identify such a world story?
Rudolf Steiner virtually demanded, from the early 20th century, it must
contain an element that demonstrates the redemption of the feminine that
in turn will revitalize and transform the world. Joseph Campbell
reminded us it must, foremost, reveal our transcendent nature within the
world and the cosmos, as well as provide guidance for what is expected
of us throughout all the stages of life. It must model the
archetypal greatness of what it means to be Human, Rhea White and
William James would suggest. David Spangler infers, as does
Steiner, it must be NEW to represent this unprecedented new round of
human consciousness evolution, not just a rehash of an old story.
Nevertheless, Dr. Steiner went so far as to offer a kind of
"starter dough" for leavening this new archetypal adventure,
the original Isis myth, with which he himself enjoyed some creative
play. But he carefully explained the final story must come out of
its own time, sourced in the inspiration, imagination, and intuition of
those who are discovering it from their own lived experience. Finally, to be that ultimate guiding story it
must unquestionably, powerfully, passionately speak to and for each
and all human beings.
Let's explore this together as a direct and on-going question. Send in those mythic stories along these lines that speak to
you. We are not going to be responsible for any "final vote,"
and yet one way that can help us begin to see how we all do see this is
through a survey option, which will eventually be added to this part of
the website.
As more of us attune ourselves to this need for a global
myth, this Great Potential,
we can together hold this crucial and compelling question until it takes
on a life of its own within us. Until the question lives fully within our
collective consciousness. It's like birth -- living with a
question to the point that it lives us. When the answer in the
fullness of time begins to live in enough people, a wave of recognition
will grow to be so clear, we will know; there will eventually
be a felt consensus.
=-
According to
White, from her EHE Background I Papers, she
explains,
I also feel that the act [of writing an EHE autobiography] has
value for society, and even for the planet as a whole. This is
because we need a new story to make sense of who we are as human
beings and why we are here. The story of mechanistic,
behavioristic science has resulted in anomie, loss of meaning
and connection, boredom, and the need for ever more violent
"kicks" and dangerous "highs," as in drug
abuse. In our society today there is a dangerous lack of
reverence towards other humans, other life forms, and life
itself. Perhaps the most practical thing we can do is write a
better story. What better place is there to begin than with
ourselves? .... The big surprise in all of this is that in
writing about our most secret, intimate, personal EHEs – those
that are uniquely our own – we come to experience ourselves as
rooted in our common humanity and as connected to all life. ...
People who are centered in this experience are bound to live
vastly different lives than those who are bent and twisted by
anger, doubt, fear, and pain, such that their best hope is ...
at worst, to seek kicks in killing or maiming other humans or
animals or to get lost in drugs or pornography or crime.
The seeds of transcendental and connective experiences, that is,
EHEs, are scattered throughout our lives. What we need to do is
find them and then cultivate them. A good way to begin is to
start your EHE autobiography.
|
Beyond the EHE Autobiography
White points
out, what we need is a story for each of us, [and ultimately and to the
point,] for all of us. . .
... What we need is a story that will unite science and
spirituality, self and world. But first it must occur at the
individual level. ... Each of us needs a story that charges our
daily lives with meaning and puts us personally in touch with
the sacred. There are many books about writing or better yet,
living one's own story, one's own myth. But the myths of old
contained an element that is missing from most stories told
today, and that is a link with the sacred. Exceptional human
experiences [and specifically, recording one's EHE-based story]
can serve as those links; they are those happenings in our lives
that can pull us out of boredom and disconnection into a world
of meaning and connection. We have to learn how to honor these
experiences and let them into our lives.
|
White explains the possible benefits of this experiential process within the context of society. She invites us to contemplate the
value of a collective sense of story garnered from the amassing in our
social awareness of many EHE stories and autobiographies and the fresh new washes of
meaning and empowerment as a culture, perhaps as a world culture, we may
experience. It is very conceivable to envision this process evolving
into the realization of a whole new collective or unified understanding,
a world-sized new paradigm coming in play:
When a sufficient number of people [undertake the writing of
their EHE autobiography], the larger story [our cultural or
world story, at least the human part of it] will emerge.
Exceptional human experiences catapult us into the new paradigm
[beyond our present disenchantment and lack of meaningful
connection with each other, with the world, and with the sacred,
i.e., the new paradigm]. We become a part of it and we discover
it is a part of us. We are no longer apart from it. The
scientific method cannot take us there. But once we ourselves
are there, and when we are willing to take the further leap of
sharing our experiences with others, we will not only be inside
the new view that is needed to join physical and spiritual, mind
and matter, body and mind, but we will be playing a significant
part in bringing it to birth. Once more, as in ages past, the
story of each human will be the story of humankind, and vice
versa. We and our times will be in step and will move forward as
one. Science can do nothing but follow, as it is right that it
should.
... Creating one's story is not simply
something one can do alone. Part of the act of creating one's
story and working out the meaning of one's life involves living
it out in some way (i.e., acting on it). So only does it really
become real to oneself. One of the first ways to do this is to
tell others about it, in a context where it seems relevant, even
though it may be embarrassing or difficult. By sharing our EHEs,
the other person validates the experience, even if he or she
reacts negatively. But often the response is positive, and when
it is, the other person may be moved by the first person's story
to share his or her EHEs as well. This heightens the sense of
meaning and reality for both in ways that go beyond simply
describing one's EHEs. A process seems to be initiated by such
interchanges that operates independently of both persons and
that leads to connectedness and interconnections. One has
entered into the process of spinning the web of the new
paradigm. We don't think it out; we live out of it and into a
new way of being in the world.
|
And:
|
The new paradigm, or taken-for-granted worldview that is
issuing forth from our very being, is not many but One.
This new view is revealed by all exceptional human
experiences (EHEs), or anomalous experiences that have been
personalized, and that lead to personal and transpersonal growth and
the experience of being inside a new worldview, the Experiential
Paradigm. I called it this because to be known it must be
experienced, not just thought out.
It is a world we are meant to inhabit.
It is a world in which one nurtures oneself by nurturing
others and by not turning away from nurturing oneself as well, as
each of us, too, is a person, and ultimately we are one. ...
a world in which one knows that to lie to or willfully harm
another being is to be untrue to and injure oneself. ...
In a word, this new world is the Self we all are, and it will
not be at an end until the whole creation travails no longer.
And even that endpoint is likely to be but a new beginning.
...
We are called not to do but to be.
Not to be practical but to be who we are.
And who we are shouts to us from any and all exceptional
experiences. Far from
being chimeras, EHEs are the bedrock of the new dispensation.
If we wish to take practical steps to save ourselves and this
globe, let us gravitate to the More that we are. ...
If enough of us do it, we can bring the new to pass. ...
|
Here's another, same article, about
2nd paragraph:
|
In the past, the experience of having "attained" the ultimate
may have been experienced as the End of all things--"the last for
which the first was made." But we are in a new world now. In our
day that level which was the awesome wondrous end, the ceiling of the
old paradigm, is the ground floor of a new worldview. In the new
paradigm, what was perceived as the end is our opportunity to begin. As
the poet T.S. Eliot (1954) put it: "In my end is my
beginning," or as it might more aptly be expressed today: "In
our end is our beginning."
|
==
Identity was cultural, not individual
1. Physical
evolution for homo sapiens: has
slowed tremendously over the last several or tens of thousands of years
– compare to oldest found humans thus far, maybe three million [?] years
ago.
2. Cultural
evolution
Religions ; secular/cultural leaders
3. Consciousness
evolution
explicit, overt, expressive Individuality
French Revolution ; Western science
Individuation started to take precedence
Political freedom on the one hand
Creative freedom naturally grew out of or innate to
the burgeoning of individuation / individual talents, abilities,
propensities began to shine
In 1800s, even late 1700s:
what lost us all semblance of our guiding stories / mythos: the
loss of our sense of soul and spirit, even mind, through a philosophy
that so mired us in the physicalistic, there wasn't even room to
acknowledge consciousness, except in passing as "the ghost in the
machine." And more recently even this was dismissed. So
without a ghost of a chance to do this gracefully, how do you think the
scientific powers that be managed to convince themselves there is no
consciousness?? Surely, this will be remembered [and re-membered]
as the most amazing story of denial in all the annals of earthly human
history.
-=
Look
at Rhea's work within the context of ..
What characteristics would identify such a world story?
Rudolf Steiner virtually demanded, from the early 20th century, it must
contain an element that demonstrates the redemption of the feminine that
in turn will revitalize and transform the world. Joseph Campbell
reminded us it must, foremost, reveal our transcendent nature within the
world and the cosmos, as well as provide guidance for what is expected
of us throughout all the stages of life. It must model the
archetypal greatness of what it means to be Human, Rhea White and
William James would suggest. David Spangler infers, as does
Steiner, it must be NEW to represent this unprecedented new round of
human consciousness evolution, not just a rehash of an old story.
Nevertheless, Dr. Steiner went so far as to offer a kind of
"starter dough" for leavening this new archetypal adventure,
the original Isis myth, with which he himself enjoyed some creative
play. But he carefully explained the final story must come out of
its own time, sourced in the inspiration, imagination, and intuition of
those who are discovering it from their own lived experience. Finally, to be that ultimate guiding story it
must unquestionably, powerfully, passionately speak to and for each
and all human beings.
Let's explore this together as a direct and on-going question. Send in those mythic stories along these lines that speak to
you. We are not going to be responsible for any "final vote,"
and yet one way that can help us begin to see how we all do see this is
through a survey option, which will eventually be added to this part of
the website.
As more of us attune ourselves to this need for a global
myth, this Great Potential,
we can together hold this crucial and compelling question until it takes
on a life of its own within us. Until the question lives fully within our
collective consciousness. It's like birth -- living with a
question to the point that it lives us. When the answer in the
fullness of time begins to live in enough people, a wave of recognition
will grow to be so clear, we will know; there will eventually
be a felt consensus.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* * *
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The
New Story
Part 1. In
Search of a Collectively Recognizable Global Myth
Part
2: "The
Bedrock of
the New Dispensation: EHE"
