Block by Block

This week I'm going door-to-door in my neighborhood handing out or leaving flyers inviting people to Monday night's potluck at out house. I've been having the potlucks for years, but only recently began to invite the neighbors. The monthly neighborhood potluck is a big success. People are longing for connection; eating together works!

If you're interested in more ideas on how to build community in your neighborhood, check out Block by Block. It's where I'm putting most of my energy these days.

Synthetic evolution

Ganesh Baba once wrote,

"‘Survival of the weakest’ is the basic trend of evolution in the human phase. It requires a unique synthesis of production and distribution in the four phases of our being, namely, physical, biological, psychological and spiritual. Synthetic evolution, survival, survival in all phases, is total survival, and not a partial process, as in the biological Darwinian phase. Now we are passing the Jungian, and preparing for the advanced analogue of the Buddha phase.”

He's saying that in order to survive, humanity must grow out of "survival of the strongest" into the "survival of the weakest", a shift to the heart.

The shift must happen in all four phases of our existence, the physical, biological, psychological and spiritual, in the way they interact, a unique coming together of nature and spirit.

Darwinian evolution is only a small arc in the great cycle of creation/evolution. Synthetic evolution goes beyond the Darwinian phase, through the Jungian, or psychological phase, and into a new spiritual phase.

Each age has its avatar or figure who embodies the age. Baba speaks of the avatar (or avatars) of the next age as being more like the Buddha than like the Christ, avatar of the passing age, more receptive than active.

And, indeed, the presence that is growing in so many of us now is more receptive than active.

The Tolle teachings are transmitting the wisdom of the new consciousness to anyone receptive.

And Ganesh Baba's teachings prepare the receptacle: posture, prana, practice, presence.

trying to understand the universe in terms of consciousness

while listening to Ganesh Baba on my iPod...

Some notes and thoughts

“We must become more familiar with the essence and structure of consciousness, because it is out of consciousness we come and to consciousness we return.” Ganesh Baba, “The Rochester Raps,” recorded by Ira Landgarten, 1981.

The cosmos is created out of consciousness vibrating at different frequencies, visible to our limited senses as a fractal world created from rainbows and scales:




"The eight broad categories all operate within the human psyche, but the physical body operates only in the first three dimensions: matter, energy and space. The fourth dimension, time, we can barely conceive; it is like a baby moving around in the womb trying to understand the outside world."

Errors in understanding the subtle worlds come when the mind claims greater wisdom than it has, and sees exactly the opposite of what is. Because as soon as the individual mind, the ego, enters into consciousness, consciousness flips and becomes its opposite: Mercury, in flight between worlds.

The möbius twist.

Thoughts take on a life of their own whenever they get the chance. Potential archetypes arise with every word we say, with every intention, with every mood, with every thought we have (conceive, give birth to, create), whether conscious or unconscious. Some are conceived in the unconscious and take on the dark aspect of things not understood, and others are born in the light of consciousness and bring wisdom and understanding.

We fear what we don't understand and project our fear outward onto others and into the future.

"Jung knew. The darkness is coming into the light now, willy-nilly."

The quality of the consciousness, receptive or resistant, high or low, subtle or dense, with which each of us receives and responds to the darkness coming to light now will determine our experience. Yet the only way to get to the next level is through synthesis.

These are times of highest synthesis, of enormous potential —

of the possibility of coming together without baggage,

of receiving and giving without judgment,

of being present, instead of just in time.

Baba says the darkness will rise in all four fields of our existence, the physical, biological, psychological and spiritual. There is no stopping it.

It will manifest differently in each of our lives, though some groups will share their experiences.

But once we recognize the light in disguise in what appears to be darkness, we will be through the twist.

Getting through

Clearly we are coming closer to the möbius twist in perception that the coming weeks, months, and years must bring.

I'm so interested in how others imagine the transition unfolding.

I think it's up to all of us to try to understand what's happening and to respond to it in the best possible frame of mind, body and soul — to be, as Ganesh Baba said, in 03, Optimal Operating Order— because, like many of us now, I believe we simultaneously create and are created by our experience. Crippled minds and souls can create chaos.

I think about this: one's response determines one's experience. Group responses determine group experiences.

Attention is the key, isn't it? What you pay attention to generates. Attention creates an opening but consciousness only pours through when mind steps aside. When mind is too dense, too set, consciousness must either seek another channel or flow through limited and narrow, set pathways. With aware, alert, unfocused attention - the relaxed attention meditation aspires to - consciousness rushes in and we see that this world is a complex, many-aspected reflection of the Self. The sacred is apparent everywhere; the re-enchantment of the world occurs. What hubris to think that man's mind had a monopoly on consciousness!

It is a mass awakening to the cosmic intelligence underlying the ordinary world. The rise of the Mother - and there is already a great opening. It's as if we are in the transition stage of the birth of awakening.

And, thank godness, more and more people are practicing presence. More and more people understand that they are the stage as well as the actors, and more, that they create both the stage and the play in their minds. The more we open to possibility, the more easily the birth of the new consciousness will go. Oprah Winfrey was midwife to the birth of consciousness in tens, perhaps hundreds now, of thousands of people. Class, culture and education have nothing to do with it. That hierarchy is crumbling.

The new consciousness coming in now, in particular since 10/8/08, is insisting that we step back from our ordinary lives - some people are getting a nasty wake-up call now - and become observers of our own minds, both our projections (active) and our responses (receptive).

I think we are controlled by our minds via water and earth, and control with our minds via air and fire. Water and earth encompass the physical and biological fields, and air and fire, the psychological and spiritual fields in which we all function.

For the transition to go easily, open-mindedness, flexibility and balance are necessary. It would seem that those who are ready to give up all expectation, to be open to absolutely anything, who don't resist, will have the easiest time.

The cocoon is breaking down; humanity is coming into its butterflyhood. The imaginal discs are linking up!