Heaven's Earth

Life is about connections-the connection between our conscious life and our inner self, other people, and with the planet. When we are connected we have a sense of well being, we feel as if everything is OK and is going to be ok; when we are disconnected, we feel confused, abandoned, lonely, separate, or lost.

Although we are never really disconnected from the whole it can feel that way when our constant fascination and identification with the outer world hinders our relationship with inner beingness. This inner and outer dance is the seeming paradox you and I face every day: that our inner world determines the outer experience. Yet we believe the outer experience of our senses and doubt the power of the inner. This is like the stream that flows from the mountain top down through the valleys and back to the ocean. Our world flows from the inner mountain to the outer valleys and to the ocean of life. All interconnected.

The Native American Hopi Mother told of the great spider web of all existence. “Sons and daughters, all points on the spider’s web are connected to all other points on the web. Be careful what you do for it changes the web.” Other great traditions like the ancient Vedas of India say that we are all part of a universal web of light and you and I are individual points of light within the whole. There are many early cultural myths about creation, oneness and connection.

The basic teaching is of the Budda-vatamsak Sutra is the interconnectedness of everything. If everything is interconnected then everything is also interdependent.  Lama Surya Das in his book Awakening the Buddist Heart says, “Reading it [the Sutra], we think of the world as the jeweled lattice of the Hindu God Indra’s web, in which each sparkling, mirrorlike jewel reflects and thus contains all the others. Like these reflecting jewels we are not separate, and we are not one; rather we are interrelated and interconnected.” (Broadway Books, New York, 2000)

A more modern version of such a myth is described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. The story tells of the treacherous winter journey through the Himalayan mountainsfollowing a plane crash. When the party arrives at this place called Shangri La they realize it’s very special. It’s paradise. Everyone feels connected to all the others and to a deeper part of themselves. There is no violence or upset, just peace and harmony.  When the visitors become afraid they will never have their previous lives and friends and relatives again they disrupt the peace (as the ego would just before meditation) and most leave.

Have you ever felt separate from your friends or family, even though you may be in their midst?We make the climb to come back to our inner mountain and sometimes we lose site of the summit and worry about the past and the future (ego mind) our friends and family. We become cold and disconnected from others in our climbing party and end up isolated in a valley suffering from delusions from the altitude. We get lost in our ego self, our judgments, worries or anxieties and lose site of the big-picture becoming stuck in the valleys.

We have all experienced these valleys, feelings of being lost in the dark night of the soul. So lost, in fact, we cannot find our path. We loss site of the bigger picture of life and our place is this world. In fact, this is where most people are today, evidenced by the chaos in the world.

Look at the planetary picture and we can see that most of our troubles are the result disconnection; Wars, fighting, violence, greed, destruction of the planet. It is surely easier to kill, destroy and take when we feel separate. In this state the ego mind creates endless divisions: black, white, yellow; smart, average, dumb; fat, skinny; rich, poor. This way the ego mind can feel OK, because there is always someone better or worse off to compare to but all this does is further the estrangement. Clearly our sense of separation from our true inner self has major consequences.

How did we become disconnected?

One of the most important shifts that took place in modern history took place when science became the new religion. And what happened was they took the work done by some of the great scientists in the 1700 and 1800s and propagated that out to become the standard of philosophy, and religion. Remember that prior to this religion dictated what science said, as Galileo Galilei discovered.

Sir Issac Newton, one of great scientists of the 1600-1700s, was one of what I call the “gang of science.” Although they were not of the same time period, the rest of this gang was Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei-all believing the world was a giant machine. These scientist laid the foundations for theory of classical mechanics. It demonstrated how universal gravitation, the three laws of motion, that stars rotate in a galaxy, and planets revolve around suns: All mechanical processes.

If the universe is mechanical, and we are part of the universe, then by deduction what interpretation must be made about who we are?  We humans are machines.

The machine viewpoint still persists. In the medical profession today they specialize in parts. There's a cardiologists for your heart. There's a doctor for your stomach, an endocrinology, neurologist, etc. Each knows about a particular part and how to fix it. When you go to the doctor with your problem most often they send you to a specialist, then a different specialists and no one has the whole, bigger picture. The result is that healing is really fixing.

We lose something profound with the gang, Bruno, Galile and Newton, concept of the mechanical universe. First and foremost is our sense of connection; connection to the universe, to the earth, to one another, and to our own souls.

What are some of the consequences of disconnection?

Let’s explore just a few examples here and later will look in more depth at these effects.

“In contemporary society unsustainability is the result of economic and social expansion combined with environmental change and degradation. These produce inequalities and imbalances that disorient people and overload the administrative and control capability of society’s dominant structures and institutions. Frustration breeds resentment and generates hate and violence. Society enters a period of social and political crisis.” Laszlo, Ervin (2010-04-10).

How much fresh water will there be in just five years?  It is the next major crisis humans will face. The amount of farmland being destroyed by chemicals and waste products is growing at an alarming rates.

The world’s economic future is in jeopardy as verified by the wall street, banking, home loan mortgage and market crash of 2008, and recently with the crash of August 2011. The interconnectedness of the world economies is shown by the domino effect of the recent Euro troubles (2011). These systems are collapsing partially under the weight of unwise consumerism driven by a loss of connection with ourselves and real needs, and partially due to just plain greed. Corporations now have unprecedented  influences in politics, while science has become an arm of corporate and political systems used to validate points of view rather than true science. Governmental regulatory bodies are extensions of the industries they regulate.

Societies, as well, are showing the effects from disconnection. People have become so divisive that we cannot agree on the basics of life; people don’t want anyone else to get ahead; their view is the only view and each group holds their view as gospel. Respecting others and other points of view is disappearing worldwide. With so many people on the earth we have many more opinions in a world brought closer together by high-tech communications devices.

Then if we turn to health we find an abundance of toxins entering our bodies on a daily basis that we not aware of. A movie about the Dr. Gerson showed the different kinds of contaminants in our foods. For example, many of you have most likely heard of MSG add to food to increase the flavors. Because of its side effects labeling require disclosure of it in the foods. You'll be pleased to know that there are 13 or 14 other varieties of this group of chemicals called glutamates that we don’t associate with similar side effects. It's a toxin but only one of the many kinds of toxins that we have added to foods, aluminum Sulfate. If we lose our connection to each other we will be willing to do anything to each other.

If I am not connected it doesn't matter. I'm could be a CEO sitting in the corporate tower not worried about the affected of what my company does on people. I do worry about a special group of people called shareholders.

If you and I and everyone else really felt connected we wouldn't be doing these kinds of things. Ultimately what I do to you I do to myself. In quantum physics we Are all connected. So, if we are all connected we wouldn't be doing this to mother Earth or our fellow travelers on the Space Ship. Bucky Fuller when he wrote his book on spaceship earth, in the early 70s talked about do something to change or we will destroy ourselves and the planet.

We know that consciousness key. Yet, consciousness is something that most of the planet is not even aware of, except, perhaps, as a term. Not only do people not understand what consciousness is but they don’t know how it works or why it works. And yet it's one of the most important understandings in our lives.

Emerson said, what you think about all day long is what you become. That is seeding consciousness.  We have to seed consciousness with what because most of us think about what we don’t want all day long. We need to shift the collective consciousness in a new way to create health and for ourselves and the planet. Why? If we don't, it will take us in the direction it is heading now, Chaos!

In Chaos theory, part of mathematics, studies the behavior of dynamical systems. These systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions. There is a point in chaos theory called bifurcation where the outcome of a system changes because of changes in initial conditions. A tipping point is reached and a split occurs.

We are at that place on the planet where the split more complications or simpler more connected life.

We can feel the complications today. Is your life more complex ?

We don't need huge books to explain the truth to us. They resonate with us, what we need is we need people like you who can learn simple tools, use them and teach them. This is the way we will build the consciousness of health on the planet.

It is not going to happen by simply ignoring it and letting life continue to go on.  Then we are condemning future generations. 

There's a lot to take place, but the first step is your connection. We have to come back to our spiritual roots: the spiritual roots of our soul, our connection to God to Spirit, to the Universe and everyone in it.

The second step is seeding consciousness. You can take classes and learn from those who know. Create a small group of nine or ten people to practice. Call up your friends and have them come your place. Set the intention for the evening (doesn’t have to last more than 30 minutes). If we want to see health in our lives and health of the planet, set the intention.

That makes a difference, how do we know? We know from science. It makes a difference because for three years, on May 20 in 60 countries around the world The Club of Budapest holds a meditation day. Interestingly enough, statistics show that the violence and wars goes down the violent crime goes down that people feel more peaceful and more connected. That survey was done in the over 50 cities and countries around the world. That means that your group gets together and does this and another group gets together and does this, soon, change is taking place.

I give you the challenge that today is the time. Now is the moment to shift. Now is the time to get connected up. Begin to shift consciousness by seeding this “garden” so that in a year or two years or three years the reports will be magnificent.

Buckminster Fuller said as he stood in Lake Michigan, contemplating suicide, he heard a voice that said “Your life doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the Universe. You will never know the impact that you will have.” 

I say to everybody, “Your life doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the universe and you get can do some amazing things. You may not think so but, what I know is, you can.”

We are the first generation in the history of humankind that will be saving the planet!

That pretty powerful! That means that every single person born and living on this planet has this challenge. The challenge to shift consciousness to bring the planet back to health. We have to do it in our own lives. We have to do in our own community, and we have to expand that to the planet and we expand it to all areas through consciousness.