“Science is not only a disciple of reason
but, also, one of romance and passion.”

— Stephen Hawking

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In recent posts, we’ve been considering the field of quantum science. One researcher suggested that the traditional Newtonian model describing the universe as one big machine is giving way to a new concept, that the universe is actually more likely one big thought. What about emotion?

Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author of A Brief History of Time, died this year. He was a controversial figure and the quote above indicates why. Imagine, to include the words “science, romance, and passion” in the same sentence!

Traditionally, science has been the domain of reason. Ironically, those scientists who most vigorously defend their views are invariably passionate about them! In fact, all of us are passionate about something. The question is, what and why?

The Summer of Love in 1967 stands out in history as a time in modern society when passions ran especially high. It was a global phenomenon that centered in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco where about 100,000 hippies converged to unify against government, consumer values, and war, and to share their shared passions for music, painting, poetry, and meditation.

Modern historians credit a gathering on January 14, 1967 at Golden Gate Park, known as the Human Be-In, for igniting the Summer of Love. This event is remembered for Timothy Leary’s public pronouncement of his instruction: “Tune in, turn on, drop out.”

Haight-Ashbury’s hippie newspaper, The San Francisco Oracle, reported on the event this way: “A new concept of celebrations beneath the human underground must emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the revelation of unity for all mankind.” ¹

It’s interesting to look back from 50 years in the future and reflect on this social phenomenon, particularly, to assess how successfully that vision has manifested, or not. It’s true that millions more people are meditating today and that great strides have been made towards improved social justice and more equality. At the same time, financial inequity is at an all-time high (similar to what it was during the era of the robber barons) and both racism and fascism seem to be resurfacing with a vengeance.

Perhaps it’s time to reboot the summer of love, incorporating lessons we’ve learned since then. Of course, that would contravene the well-known adage that the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history!

In this case, history tells us that the Beatles were wrong. “All you need is love” is a heartening sentiment but evidence proves we need more than love. What else do we need to achieve the lofty, idealistic goals of the sixties?

For an innovative answer, let’s return to science and that opening quote from Hawking. As he infers, there’s a way for reason, romance, and passion to be complementary, not oppositional. We might wonder what could have happened back in the sixties had reason not been excluded. After all, the phrase, “tune in, turn on, drop out” isn’t exactly steeped in reason! The romance and passion are there all right but that wasn’t enough to produce the change that was envisioned. We have proof of that, fifty years later.

Conversely, trading the Newtonian model of the universe as one big machine for a quantum perspective that it’s one big thought is a model without emotion. Why not include it all?

Today, for our own summer of love, 2018-style, let’s rework Leary’s statement. “Tune in, turn on, drop out” can become “Tune in, turn on, engage.” The type of engagement I’m thinking of is practical… to engage in our lives moment by moment by being vividly present and work together to improve society through that quality of unjudging attention.

Back in the sixties, many thousands of young people scorned business and government in favor of art and music. A counter culture developed, populated by those who had dropped out of mainstream culture. Imagine what society might be like today had the millions of talented, passionate souls who dropped out to form that counter culture focused their genius and commitment to create change from the inside, rather than fight against (or ignore) the status quo from the outside.

Maybe that’s a powerful lesson for us today. Perhaps we could initiate our own personal summer of love, with this in mind. It would mean making a commitment to the moment and marrying reason with passion, to bring our deepest values directly into the material world. Magic could happen!

References:

“Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion,
flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge,
tension is called peace, gossip is called news,
and auto-tune is called singing.”

~ Criss Jami

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It’s 34 years since George Orwell’s 1984 dystopian novel accurately predicted how confused future society would become. But he didn’t tell the whole story and neither does mainstream media.

It’s remarkable to witness how clearly Orwell predicted the 21st Century. Newspeak was the official language of the ruling party in his novel and its intention was to employ “doublethink” to eliminate thought crimes. Doublethink is described this way online: “Doublethink is the act of holding, simultaneously, two opposite, individually exclusive ideas or opinions and believing in both simultaneously and absolutely. Doublethink requires using logic against logic or suspending disbelief in the contradiction.” The three slogans inside the novel, “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength,” are all examples of doublethink.” ¹

Fake news is our name for it today, where facts have become “so called facts” and social media manipulation expertly steers viewers, listeners, and readers into carefully managed belief silos of obedience and advocacy for all that’s best for their puppet masters.

There’s just one problem with these Machiavellian strategies – consciousness has something else in mind. Incredibly, it’s only within the last hundred years that science has begrudgingly admitted that consciousness may actually play a role in our experience of reality. New advances in quantum physics are confirming that we live in a participatory universe. And that’s upsetting every applecart of traditional understanding.

Control is the issue. The human population includes those who control and those they control. The controllers of course are the vast minority, sometimes referred to as the 1%. But they have the necessary position, power, and money to ensure they stay in control, at least temporarily. Revolutions happen, although at least in America discontent is managed through the spectacle of regular democratic elections, assuring that “sheeple” (humans acting like sheep) remain convinced they have a say in which strings are pulled.

The powers that be don’t appreciate threats. Discoveries in the quantum world that link science and spirituality are disconcerting for all of us, because we’re realizing reality is not what we’ve assumed, but these insights are especially disturbing to those managers of the status quo. This calls to mind what Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz said at one point, when confronted by the strangeness of the world she found herself in): “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

This phrase has become a meme, repeated millions of times and meaning “To no longer be in a place that one knows or where one is comfortable; to be in a completely unfamiliar and/or discomfiting environment.”

Lao Tsu said, “The world is won by those who let it go.” Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” What do we say … what do we believe?

It’s likely that if you’re reading this blog you have a somewhat evolved understanding of the current human condition. You may have become so turned off by the daily assault of negative news that you’ve turned it off. That’s not good news to our overlords. They need to reach us to control us and if we disconnect from the mediums they use we’re no longer available to manipulate. Their greatest concern? We just might wake up from this dream and realize that we’re not really designed to be consumers, that we’re all inherently creators.

Former President George W. Bush did his best to perpetuate illusion when he advised: “I encourage you all to go shopping more.” Apparently, millions of us listened and obeyed. Through one crisis after another, starting with 911 and including the financial crash of 2008, we’ve avoided outright revolution so far. We keep shopping, we stay distracted, we behave.

Meanwhile, consciousness is doing its thing … expanding human awareness. Millions of people are waking up to the lies and a very different truth. They (we) are choosing the road less traveled. That term was penned by American poet Robert Frost. Here’s the context:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Some of us know there’s a choice and we’re choosing differently, moment by moment. We’re ignoring or resisting mainstream media programming that casts us as victims in a soap opera drama and consciously creating our lives by expressing the qualities that are most important to us, like love and compassion and forgiveness. We may glance at the news from time to time and notice the madness, but we’ve shed the programmed belief that what’s being presented is true. We’ve awakened to a fundamentally different reality and, while we don’t know what’s coming any better than others, we are increasingly filled with hope and gratitude, because we’ve plugged in to the one truthful broadcast: life itself.

References:
1. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-principles-of-Ingsoc-in-1984

“The less you know, the more you believe.”

~ Bono

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The concept of “fake news” has gone viral. It might be described as “so called facts weaponized to sabotage my agenda.”

Optimists who follow a spiritual path believe we are nearing the birth of a Golden Age. Realists notice that the world is getting increasingly darker. Of course, we wouldn’t be aware of light without darkness so, one might say: more darkness, more light.

Those brave (or foolish) enough to watch the mainstream news, otherwise known as the “mudstream” news, or the “lamestream news,” are increasingly aware of the concept of “fake news.” Is this real or fake? There’s always been deceit in what we’re fed by corporate controlled media. Propaganda takes many forms. Those who realized early that television is an advertising medium may not have fully grasped that the advertising is not primarily in the ads but in the lifestyles that television programs present. There’s a reason this is called “programming.”

Why is it that we seem to be increasingly forgiving of outright lying by leaders who, once upon a time, were expected to model behavior our children could admire and seek to emulate? Because we have fully embraced the belief that the end justifies the means.

According to a recent blog by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, “Many of President Donald Trump’s critics have raised concerns in recent weeks about his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. If the revelations are true, Trump’s infidelity is a serious matter between him, his God and his spouse.

“Quickly, so-called white evangelicals rushed to defend the president, urging the nation to ‘forgive’ and move on. ‘All these things were years ago,’ Jerry Falwell, Jr. told CNN. Another stalwart of Trump’s faith advisors, Tony Perkins, told Politico he and others are willing to give the president a ‘mulligan’ on issues of personal morality because he champions an evangelical agenda.” ¹

Indeed, the end justifies the means. Here in this end cycle of the Kali Yuga, illusion dominates truth. Facts are now “so called facts” and routinely dismissed when they interfere with the fulfillment of personal agendas. As more and more of what we are presented as “truth” is in fact fraudulent, this becomes the new normal and we are increasingly complacent about it all. This recalls graffiti scrawled on a subway wall: “The problem with this country is we’re all apathetic.” Underneath, someone spray painted, “Who cares?”

How did it get to be this way? The image of the proverbial “slippery slope” comes to mind, as does the urban myth about the frog in steadily warming water who will sit there contentedly as the temperature rises until he boils to death. If he was dunked in hot water he would react immediately to save himself. It’s the slow, creeping change that seduces us into apathetic inaction.

When we honestly survey the world scene, it’s only realistic to acknowledge that it’s increasingly dark, that holistic awareness seems to be declining. The rise of the alt right, mass school shootings, raging racism, wealth inequity unlike anything we’ve witnessed since feudal times, and the determined effort, at least in this country, to ignore the dangers of climate change.

The world is now thoroughly “ego-centric.” We’ve built this modern world according to our beliefs, central of which is separation from God and nature. And, we are proud of ourselves, like children showing off for our mothers. “Look Mommy, I built this computer, this artificial reality game, this skyscraper, I have a billion dollars in the bank. Aren’t I clever and good? Please, notice me, praise me, love me.”

But this is not the whole story. Meanwhile, under the radar and un-reported – but absolutely real in experience for millions of us – is a growing sense of oneness with God and nature. We find ourselves literally transforming, and we seek each other out for support and inspiration. We increase our meditation time, not to better handle stress but because we love communing that way. We spend more time in nature for the same reason.

We find the boundaries that have separated us as an entitled human, arrogantly presumed to be the superior species on the planet (despite mounting evidence to the contrary), beginning to blur as we come to know ourselves, not as physical bodies bloated with swollen egos, but as the loving, gracious souls we are, in a synergistic, symbiotic relationship with all other life forms.

As Paul Harvey, famed radio host from the 70’s, always said to conclude his program, “”And now you know the rest of the story.”

References:

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-white-evangelical-defenders-embody-slaveholder-christianity-ncna842406

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.
Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.
Let reality be reality.
Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

~ Lao Tzu

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Regardless of how successful we may become in personally managing the universe, life always has other plans, which often disrupt our own. What then?

All of us are different. If you are working towards saving the planet, that is a valid experience for you, through which you will grow. Someone else may have a different perspective; they are just watching and laughing at the insanity of it all. No one is right or wrong. We can’t invalidate any experience. Ultimately, all of us are here to grow through experience, by walking exactly where our feet are.

The arena for experience is always here. And we are all, always, fulfilling the primary intention of consciousness which is to ever more fully be itself through the experience of itself. Through it all – no matter what happens – we are fulfilling that intention to grow, to evolve, to be more whole. If we lose the thread of that under the assault of “bad news,” just pause to notice that you are breathing.

Breath is life and life is orchestrating consciousness. You are still alive and you are still here, which means that you are growing and evolving. What’s happening may not match what you expect or want, but instead of resisting, complaining, or resigning yourself to something being “wrong,” just watch what’s going on as a detached observer, by being wakeful in the here and now of true reality. This moment and this attitude is the only way to find hope.

Everything is a happening of consciousness, politically, economically, environmentally, you name it. Everyone is handling life in their own unique ways. What’s important is who you choose to be in relationship to the happenings of life that come your way.

You can be reactive, thinking it’s horrible and that it should be different. But it is the way it is. To say that it shouldn’t be this way just makes you crazy, looking for someone to blame and, if your suffering becomes extreme enough, eventually blaming God. But you are God, in that sense. You are the creator of your experience because of your choices, who you choose to be.

In the Beatles song, Let it Be, Paul McCartney sang, “And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me.” Yes, the moon is still there, somewhere, reflecting the light of the sun. And the sun will rise on its own, without our help. Life continues, in sorrow and in joy.

Imagine what might happen if we adopted this attitude – let it be – towards every aspect of our lives. Would that create apathy, indifferent heartlessness, compassionless inaction? For those who haven’t accepted this way, yes, that’s the expectation. For those who’ve embraced acceptance, the opposite is true.

Acceptance, the kind of which we’re discussing, connects us to the Divine. Because … that’s what the Divine is doing! Connected this way, we immediately access the wisdom of the Divine, which guides us into right action. After all, we can’t imagine the Divine is lazy! However we conceive of it, whatever intelligent power is sustaining life throughout the billion simultaneous universes, isn’t sleeping on the job. The coordination is impossibly complex and perhaps just wise enough to orchestrate the details of our lives, should we allow it.

John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” He was saying exactly the same thing that Lao Tzu said, centuries earlier:
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

As the craziness of the human world becomes more obvious and intrusive, we can remind ourselves of this merging of ancient and modern wisdom and remember to “let it be,” no matter what is happening, and to discover what right action is in the moment, because we are connected to the source of all intelligence.

References: