You know what it's like when you are gnawing on a particular
interest or concern that will not let you go. Have you ever
brooded on something [it can be a positive or creative idea, too]
to the point that you had the uncanny feeling it was brooding
you,
almost as if it had acquired a presence of its own?
Many of us take such things into our prayers and other
spiritual practices, into some form of reflection or creative
expression. Also, whether by intent or not, if we feel it strongly
enough, we "sleep on it," and many times we are
pleasantly surprised after a night's sleep to waken to the
awareness that things seem to have sorted themselves out or that the
needed healing or answer has been drawn to us or will soon be. One way we intuitively know this
even before the facts catch up with us is, we wake up with a clear
difference in feeling about the issue. We can feel it has
ceased to be a gnawing issue.
Although
thus far, with rare exception, we have not mutually acknowledged
we do this, as our global communication effectiveness grows to
provide nearly every person in the world access to the same information,
greater numbers of people
are simultaneously reading or hearing/seeing the same [for
example, news] interests or issues
in-common. We can FEEL this collective awareness, and on some level we know-that-we-know
this is a collective feeling or understanding. For no small
number, this may also play out, without such exposure, as precognition, pre-knowing, which
also factors into a "global brooding" that becomes for
us a presence. Examples: the 9/11 episode; the death of Princess
Dianna, the assassinations of Mahatma Gandhi, the Kennedy brothers and
Martin Luther King, Jr.; the successful first landing of the
[Apollo 11] astronauts on the moon -- a rare celebratory moment
felt all over the world; another was when the Berlin Wall came
down. Holy days celebrated by millions-to-billions can
also be palpable as world-sized events.
Another type of occurrence experienced by many people is when there is
a conscious group intention that results in the sought change and
for which there is just no physical explanation. One famous example
is the Woodstock Festival during which everyone was asked to
concentrate or pray on stopping the rain. It had
been a relentless downpour up to the moment when the crowd of roughly 100,000
people together asked or intended that the rain stop, and within
about ten minutes, it did and ceased to be a problem during the
remainder of the event. You may remember the published experiment that
was done by the Maharishi Institute. A group of research
subjects meditated on peace specifically directed at Washington,
DC. During the times this was performed, the crime rates
went down significantly, and when they were not meditating on
this, they climbed back up to their more "normal"
rates.
Rudolf Steiner and David Spangler come to mind, but there are
others, too, who suggest when we create a sustained group
intention, this becomes a vessel within which to hold an idea or
challenge or question, providing a collective space within which
to manifest or resolve itself in some way. Again, we
naturally [mostly not with any mutually recognized awareness of
its efficacy and power] do this all the time, such as when we
create a purposeful organization, discover an answer to a
difficult challenge, or plan or initiate an
activity together -- a game or ritual; prayer groups certainly
work on this principle. We add to the caldron or vessel our
thoughts and feelings, our collective desire and assumptions ..
and doubts, etc. We can image this as a chemical or
alchemical activity.
You know we are fast becoming seven billion people on the planet
[2007]. Depending on the data of which study or country or
year you may refer to [e.g., see Statistics],
one fourth-to-one half of this number is 1,750,000,000 to
3,500,000,000 people who have had direct encounters with -- whatever you
prefer to call it -- the spiritual world, God, Goddess, All That
Is ..., the paranormal, the Ineffable, the Ultimate Mystery --
that which cannot be explained in physical terms as such.
These might have been transcendent experiences [e.g., out-of-body
or near-death experiences]; immanent experiences of a sense of
Presence within the very ordinariness of embodied life; sensory abilities may be temporarily extended
beyond the range of what materialistic science would be able to
acknowledge.
Bottom line is, you know-that-you-know this is
meta- [or greater-than-] physical. It leaves its mark on
you. For some it's merely a seed planted. For others,
it's an inner tectonic shift of instant and permanently
transformative proportions. But there is always the feeling,
you know-that-you-know.
I daresay, the more fully you know-that-you-know, the more your
life exemplifies the recognized aftereffects
associated with exceptional human
experiences / EHEs. My belief is we are in the midst of
an [r]evolutionary shift
in the consciousness of our species that is expanding our
sensory capacities as well as certain other aspects of the
operative consciousness we possess. Probably a close if
inexact match in terms of agenda and number is what Paul
H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson call the "Cultural
Creatives," a largely hidden [read that as not yet fully
mutually recognized in a manifest way], though quite coherent
subculture with certain values / worldviews in common that sound
like simply another rendition of the EHE aftereffects. Here are
the Cultural Creatives' values / traits in Ray's and Anderson's words:
-
Personal
Authenticity ["...
means that your actions are consistent with what you
believe and what you say. ... (relying) on two
apparently contradictory ways of perceiving. On the
one hand, ... personal experience: 'Tell me what
it was like for you.' ... telling each other
their experiences ... whole life stories. On the
other hand, they take a wide synoptic view of 'the big
picture,' often extending to the whole planet."
They have exceptional authenticity radar!]
-
Engaged
Action and Whole-Process Learning ["where
they can be part of creating something from the
beginning, middle, end, and through to the new
beginning"]
-
Idealism
and Activism [living their talk, being
personally engaged in causes and in work that makes a
contribution to society.]
-
Globalism
and Ecology [very attuned to a
whole-systems, big-picture approach; "they want
to see all the parts spread out side by side and trace
the interconnections"; they are "very or
extremely concerned about 'problems of the global
environment...'"]
-
The
Importance of Women [What politicians often
refer to as "women's issues" are a key to
understanding Cultural Creatives. They see
women's ways of knowing as valid: feeling
empathy and sympathy for others, taking the viewpoint
of the one who speaks, seeing personal experiences and
first-person stories as important ways of learning,
and embracing an ethic of caring ... distressed about
violence and abuse" and not to mention social
activism -- advocacy for the equal rights
of all people, unconditionally.]
-
Green
[Commitment to a
sustainable future."]
-
Altruism,
Self-Actualization, Spirituality [Although
all Cultural Creatives "have a well-developed
social conscience and a sturdy but guarded optimism
about the future," only about half of them are
committed to the cultivation of a spiritual life.]
-
Rejection
of: "'owning more stuff,'
materialism, greed, me-firstism, status display,
glaring social inequalities of race and class,
society's failure to care adequately for elders,
women, and children, and the hedonism and
cynicism that pass for realism in modern
society"; "the intolerance and narrowness of
social conservatives and the Religious Right";
"almost every big institution in modern
society"; "narrow analyses and are sick of
fragmentary and superficial glosses in the media that
don't depict what they see,
or explain what they know from their own direct
experience.*"
--
*My
emphasis on 'direct experience': This can also be
paranormal knowing as well as other kinds of knowing of
hidden facts or distrust or cynicism based on previous
events.
-- |
This
brings us to The Question in question:
|
Given
the enormous potential and beauty of what the Cultural
Creatives and EHEers and EHE Empaths share in
common in regards of concerns, values, and worldview, what
will we do with this
collective power, wisdom, and ability when the tipping-point
number of us actually Wake Up sufficiently to this mutual
realization and connectivity to fulfill this singular and unifying,
Spirit-sourced Vision?
|
And
what
will it take to get us to the tipping point?
As many know from experience and observation, when we consciously
choose to do this as a sacred act / activity, we bring into the
now sacralized vessel of our intention or question the
element of an immeasurable SOMETHING MORE.
Now
here's the Big Question we can
When
people together dwell on a singular issue or question and take that question /
issue deep within,
