The Need to Evolve

Zeus - www.freethoughtpedia.com

There is no Abundant Mindset and benefits which flow from that, or Enlightened Business and the benefits which flow from that, without personal transformation, and as glamorous as 'personal transformation' may sound, the process itself is painful, messy and anything but.

I'm not sure how many people, including most women, have really observed the birthing process. I have, 3 times ;) - it's not a pretty sight - and although mothers talk about the pain, blood, guts and mess, it's soon forgotten in the joy of a new life. 

Personal transformation is much the same, but unfortunately there is this naive idea that the process is all rose petals and harps. Most are completely unprepared for the crisis that comes with personal transformation - and here we need to create a distinction between a 'stuck crisis' and a 'growth crisis' - they both feel the same, and without knowing the context, it would be almost impossible to tell them apart.

In the face of pain and crisis, the normal untrained response is to contract, and therefore inadvertently dig even deeper into the Traditional Mindset - and it's the Traditional Mindset that is the source of all of our problems. 

And there is simply no bigger transformation than that of moving from the Scarcity or Traditional Mindset to the Abundant Mindset - it's a momentous leap, the biggest in 100,000 years of human evolution - it IS going to come with CRISIS, guaranteed. 

I received this the other day from Integral Institute, and I love the imagery 

One of the most underappreciated figures in the history of evolutionary spirituality is the German philosopher and linguist Jean Gebser. His masterpiece, The Ever-Present Origin (1949), outlines his unique vision of the emergence of human consciousness. Gebser tracks human history through a series of "mutations," or structures of consciousness, from the archaic mind of our ancestors to the more contemporary stage of mental focused awareness. In one particularly evocative passage, Gebser reflects on the beginnings of this mental awareness, as represented by the myth of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom who was born from the head of Zeus. To Gebser, such powerful imagery captures the heroic struggle of human development: 

"And it would be well for us to be mindful of one actuality: although the wound in the head of Zeus healed, it was once a wound. Every "novel" thought will tear open wounds . . . everyone who is intent upon surviving — not only earth but also life — with worth and dignity, and living rather than passively accepting life, must sooner or later pass through the agonies of emergent consciousness." 

In other words ... Growing up is going to hurt like hell. And we're just not going to be prepared to pay the price unless we carefully contemplate 

• The need to evolve 
• The benefits of evolving 
• The consequences of not 

The need to evolve 

Evolution has two voices, the masculine and the feminine, and today's post-modern culture has seen a radical feminisation of our perspective, and although this is necessary, it has come at the expense of grasping the significance of the masculine voice or Eros - Andrew Cohen has this to say about Eros 

Eros, or the creative dimension of God, is that burning intelligence and driving impulse that is ever-leaning forward, reaching toward the emergence of that which has not yet become manifest. Evolutionary Enlightenment is about unapologetically becoming a living embodiment of those values that create the conditions for that unselfconscious creativity at the very edge of the possible 

Evolution is a driving compulsion, and at the level of consciousness itself it's neither moral or immoral, it's amoral, since consciousness is one. And this simply means that evolution occurs through a violent catastrophic change of context, in which we are forced to find a new and higher perspective (or perish) or we willingly participate in and with the process. 

We can't escape the need to evolve. 

The benefits of evolving 

The benefits lie on the other side of personal transformation, and the process itself is a leap from a less complex and sophisticated world view (mindset), to a more complex and sophisticated world view - always. 

It's therefore impossible for the less mature mindset to fully grasp the benefits, except in a childlike way - in much the same way that a child can't grasp the real benefits of growing up - it's simply lies beyond anything they are able to comprehend. 

The easiest way out of this dilemma is to just accept that upward of 80% of all your problems will simply evaporate on the other side of the transformation, and that from this significantly more sophisticated mindset, the complexities of life that previously seemed to be so challenging, will seem infinitely easier to cope with. 

Of course this mindset will then proceed to create a radically more complex context, until, that mindset finds itself unable to cope, and again responds with a leap to a new, higher and even more sophisticated mindset - this is evolution of the human psyche. 

The consequences of not evolving - growing-up 

We stand at the leading edge of a 13.7 billion year evolutionary process, where particles came together to form atoms, atoms formed molecules, molecules formed organisms, organisms became complex enough to develop sentient interiority, and finally self-awareness - an extraordinary process. And evolution, at this leading edge accelerates exponentially. 

It's not going to stop or slow down because you have some reluctance to the pain of 'Growing-up'. You will simply be swept aside, and although your life is short and the price you will pay, will simply be a few short decades of stress, anxiety, frustration, anger, rage and spiritual and material poverty, your reluctant participation will affect the lives of those around you and those that follow. 

The solutions to the global challenges we now face (and your personal frustrations), can not be solved by the dominant Traditional Mindset, and almost no matter what happens, mother earth will heal. 

What we face is human 'survival' and the challenges we leave for generations to come. 

Those who can, must, for the sake of us all