All posts tagged: #evolution

         Humanity is on the precipice between the next quantum leap in evolution and our own destruction as a species. If humanity is destroyed, the universe will go on evolving. If humanity is not destroyed, humanity is poised to shift towards self-awareness of our collective consciousness, and beyond. The predominate model of the universe and our place in it is that we are the epitome of evolution – the pinnacle of live being – living in a rather dead universe. Humanity still sees the earth as predominately here for its use – and, in fact, it sees the rest of the universe that way as well – with ideas about mining in space and colonizing various planets to support still more humans once the earth is destroyed by our use and abuse practices. The predominate world view is that we live in a reality in which what is real is what science has proven – and outside of that there is no “knowing.” We have a theory for what happens at the level of the very small (quantum theory), and we have a pretty good tool for making estimates about how things work in our relative space-time at a scale on the order of magnitude of ourselves and up to planets, but that seems to fall apart at the very large end of things. Interestingly, we are now starting to see evidence that perhaps our theory of the very small also applies to the very large. This is somewhat of a strange concept to grasp, especially with our understanding about quantum entanglement and causality. What it means, essentially, is that quantum theory scales. Science is beginning to grapple with a new theory of the universe – and right on time. At the same time, humans are waking up to a higher level of consciousness. A consciousness beyond the self – a collective consciousness and an awareness of our selves as integral parts of a single, unified whole. This process has been ongoing for a very long time and is a product of evolution.

            Evolution behaves like a search and find algorithm operating in a design space. We are the product of evolution, and so is everything around us. We have focused on our own evolution here on earth, and understandably so since that is our relative viewpoint, but evolution is much larger than us. Just as we ourselves are complex adaptive systems that evolve over time, so is our planet, and so is our universe. We humans have focused so much on our own evolution (which, naturally, we can only observe up to where we currently are – we cannot see the “future,” so to speak) and have seemingly assumed that we are “complete” biologically. The predominate view is that humans evolved to the point where they could build complicated technology, and the only way forward to a “more evolved” humanity is by merging technology with our biology. And, we have made great strides with this approach. An unintended consequence, however, has been that we have ignored the fact that we are still biologically evolving as well. Specifically, our conscious awareness is expanding. This means that we are becoming aware of the fact that our consciousnesses are linked and that we are, as individual human consciousnesses, like drops of water in an ocean. This collective consciousness allows us some awareness of the awareness that emerges from our individual thoughts and experiences across time and space as we know them.

            We know a lot more collectively than we do as individuals – and the network of consciousness of which we are a part therefore often makes leaps forward occur seemingly out of nowhere. What I mean to say is that when great new discoveries and theories arise simultaneously across the planet, often seemingly at random in multiple places at once, what appears to be happening is that our collective consciousness has solved a problem for us (has become aware of a new relative truth) and then the collective consciousness plants the seeds of that solution back into our individual consciousnesses. Where biological evolution plays a part is in our receptivity to this knowledge and conscious awareness of where it comes from. With our egocentric world view we may think that we as individuals have come up with something, but actually it is more likely that we have all come up with something and now that something needs to be brought into our physical world and world view so that we can move forward. In the alternative, because we also still predominately feel like there is a god or creator of some kind, we may think that such an “all-knowing” being has reached down from the heavens to provide us with some vital information. And, when you think about it, it is pretty logical to say, hey, I know something I can’t possibly “know” (from experience), so someone who is outside of my existence must have handed it to me. Another possibility, and a more likely one, is that we live in more dimensions than we can perceive and in just such a higher dimension we are all connected as nodes in a giant network of consciousness.

            We can conceive of this concept on the scale of our experience of our own brain and when information we “know” is in our conscious, versus in our unconscious. Imagine you are working on a complicated project. You have read a lot of information about the topic of the project from a variety of sources, potentially over a long time (especially if you went to school for it). You have also got your lifetime of experiences from which to draw. Now, you are not consciously aware of all of the information your brain contains about the problem, and you may even hit a wall at which you just do not know how to proceed. One way this can be resolved is by you having an “ah ha!” moment. Many people speak about such moments occurring in the shower. When these moments occur we suddenly become consciously aware of a solution that our unconscious mind had been working away at. This happens because our brain is a connected neural network and we are only consciously aware of a small amount of its processes. Our brain the neural network is holding all of the information that we have. All of the information is not all part of our conscious awareness, and we have not consciously connected the dots. Nonetheless, our subconscious has connected the dots for us and has essentially spat back out the answer we were seeking.

            This is the same essential process that occurs when humanity has a great breakthrough in consciousness. That is not to say that no “one” invents anything, it is not to say we are not individually important (we are individually essential, in fact), but it is to say that when we have massive shifts it is likely the product of this sort of extra-universal (in the sense that we do not understand it or have a way to scientifically describe what is going on at this time) process by which the collective mind has found a solution that no one individual is yet holding all of the keys to. When this happens, certain individuals become consciously aware of the new information. That is to say that it is received into their conscious minds. Think of this process like a radio receiving radio waves (only the radio waves in this case are at a higher dimension than we can currently perceive with any instrument). A person who has an evolved consciousness to the point of understanding themselves as part of a larger collective, who is good at tuning in to the frequency at which this information is being transferred, will pick up the waves of knowing. Once this occurs, that person will know more than they could possibly know. It is important to note that this process occurs whether the person receiving the information, or “knowing,” is aware where the information is coming from or not.

            We are now at a stage at which more of us are becoming to be aware that the knowledge we have is more than we (alone) could possibly know. This knowing has been attributed to all types of things across history. For example, a classic place to attribute such knowledge would be to the “divine” in the form of whatever deity or angel or whatever that we have decided to believe in. Other examples are that such knowing could be attributed to a person’s psychosis. It could also be attributed to a person’s own “genius.” Instead, such knowing comes from a connection with the collective consciousness. When we sleep, we can be connected to this consciousness, or we can stay in our own – it is a matter of receptivity and evolution of consciousness as to which occurs. Similarly, when we meditate, we can scour our own minds and not go beyond our selves, or we can transcend self-awareness and connect with the larger consciousness of humanity, of the planet, and, ultimately, of our universe (and possibly even beyond that, but one cannot possibly tell that from here). Similarly, when we ingest various psychedelic medicines, we can explore our own mind, or, we can go beyond that. Now, in order to be able to get beyond ourselves, we do need to consciously work on it. This is in part because such awareness and connectivity has to be a choice (more on that later), and in part because we live in a society that has us not seeing reality and instead seeing our made up ideas about reality, which means that there is a significant amount of “deprograming,” or shedding of robot parts, or what have you that must occur before our conscious mind is ready and able to receive, comprehend, and integrate such information in a grounded and meaningful way. Without such work, even if information is received, it is highly likely to be misinterpreted. Misinterpretation can lead to messiah complexes and the formation of religion. It can lead to grandiose concepts of one’s own genius. It can lead to the dis-integration of a human’s entire conscious awareness. It can cause people to appear out of touch with reality. And more.

            When such information is received by a person who is able to discern the information they have learned from themselves – and able to interpret it in a meaningful and useful way – and able to express it in language that is understood by others then the information becomes a breakthrough for humanity. Humans have had many such breakthroughs across recorded history. When our fundamental understanding, or awareness about, reality and our place in it shifts we can be said to have undergone a massive paradigm shift. At the global, societal, level there are multiple paradigms operating at all times, and there is an evolutionary progression occurring so that new paradigms emerge, and less complete understandings slowly fade away. For example, we used to live in a predominate paradigm in which earth was the center of the universe and there was one all-knowing god who created us and everything here. Now the dominate paradigm suggests that we are not the center of the universe, and rather that we are quite insignificant little biological beings that happened to evolve by complete chance on this planet with just the right conditions. We understand reality as that which we can experience with our five physical senses and that which we can perceive with the help of tools. We understand ourselves as living in three-dimensional space-time and we consider ourselves to be finite beings. We believe that our purpose is to grow indefinitely and to develop more and more technology to allow us to have a better life than nature, from which we consider ourselves separate, could provide. We are materialistic and self-serving, and we are killing ourselves. We are in desperate need of a paradigm shift. New paradigms emerge as an evolutionary process over time as the collective knowledge base grows. At certain points, when there is about to be a leap forward, some number of people will be able to intuit the shift and help push it along.

            Once the collective consciousness becomes aware of a new truth that we are evolving towards conscious awareness of it can push the information back into our individual consciousnesses. When the information comes into our individual consciousnesses it is fragmented and distorted. Multiple people will have the same knowledge but will access and understand different parts. In order for such a message to be received and then integrated into our three dimensional society it must be understood and then presented in enough different ways that some tipping point amount of society sees it as true. Once this happens the new paradigm becomes the dominant paradigm, and progress continues at a slower, incremental, pace until the next large leap emerges. Quantum mechanics is holding a part of the key to our ability to scientifically explain a bit more about just how this might work, though due to the limitations of math and computing power it may be difficult to get to a full proof. For this reason, it is very good that we have other ways of understanding things. Namely, we can tap into this collective consciousness and we can develop and utilize our higher dimensional, or energetic, senses. Ultimately, it seems very likely that the principles of quantum mechanics apply equally to the very large as to the very small. It is very likely the principles do not quite apply (or rather that we will have a great deal of trouble measuring the effects there-of with any instrument couched in space-time) to our three dimensional reality as we perceive it through our five physical senses. This is specifically because we are living in a three-dimensional space-time that is definite. In other words, we are here in physical world – we have been actualized in a “solid” (at our level of perception) form. But, let us now consider a whole different level of perception.

            If we were to zoom out many orders of magnitude from our current view of our selves we could look at ourselves as very tiny parts of the larger universe in which we reside. If we were sitting outside of time and space we would perceive of our reality in an entirely different way. We could see the web of consciousness that links us all together. We could see how consciousness and energy are everywhere – and we could see that these things are impacting our time-space reality, although we are unable to perceive them. When looking at our universe as a type of connected network of consciousness, one could still perceive individual units of consciousness (in other words it makes sense that one would be able to zoom in on the consciousness and find it to be comprised of some smaller elements). At this level, our individual consciousnesses are like small particles or groups of particles. Our consciousnesses are entangled – possibly at the quantum level — in this giant network. So, while in our physical time-space reality two consciousnesses may be very far apart in time and space, if they are close to in this extra-temporal-spatial network then they will impact each other. While we, as a species, have not developed a conscious awareness of these links, quantum mechanics is quietly hinting at their existence. Similarly, quantum mechanics is quietly hinting at the impact of both observation and intention on reality and at a new understanding of causality that transcends time and space. Though it may take a while to get there in terms of the math and actual scientific evidence and proof, many alive today have direct experiential understandings about the nature of reality hinted at by quantum mechanics.

            That is all to say that a subset of humanity is already aware of their connections with all others – some are even aware of connections that cross time and space boundaries. A subset of humanity is already aware of how our intentions impact and shape our reality – and of the dreamlike nature of this realized quantum event in which we reside. Greater conscious awareness of our connection to others allows us to more consciously work together to further our own evolution. Presently, humanity is only physically evolving at a slow rate, and a part of that is explained by the fact that we are only using a small part of our brain. As our brains become more connected our conscious awareness expands and we are evolving in that sense. Our perception, awareness, and consciousness are evolving. Socially, we are still not in a place where we recognize this to be the case – and therefore we are still writing such things off either as non-scientifically provable (and therefore false). Interestingly, our ability to prove a thing using the scientific method as we currently know it has no bearing on something’s relative truth or falsehood. No bearing on “realness,” so to speak. Now, in order to get past where we are and breakthrough into a new paradigm of human endeavor what we need is a fully integrated theory of reality that incorporates all our knowledge, not merely our scientific knowledge, and pushes our understanding forward. Currently, we have the tools to do this. Our understandings about complex adaptive systems, emergence, and evolution from systems science coupled with our own direct experience with connection and causality can at least get us to a working theory.

            Let us start by looking at the universe as we know it as a type of living organism. Now, consider that within that organism exist various components. One such component is our solar system – a still smaller component of which is our planet, Earth. So, we are now looking at the entirety of earth – let’s say out to the edge of its atmosphere – as one, discernible, living system. The global system is a complex adaptive system that has evolved over time in this space. Before the evolution of beings that could receive consciousness, there would have been no awareness of its existence. That would not mean it didn’t exist, but it would mean that no one would perceive its existence because there would be no one. At some point, individual elements of the global system gained awareness of themselves as a discernible unit, or part. On Earth, as far as we can tell, human beings have the most advanced awareness of their own individual consciousnesses in this place at this time. The next step in our consciousness is to move to a collective awareness. When this level of awareness becomes the predominate level, humanity will have made a leap into a new paradigm. With collective awareness we become consciously aware of our connections with other beings – we begin to see ourselves as a consciousness receivers, and we understand that what we know is made up both from our own individual experiences and knowledge and from the larger collective knowing of our connected collective consciousness. We see that we are all individuals (and vitally important) components of this larger system. We understand that we are all at once other and at once the same. With this knowledge we can begin to trust and work with building up our ability to perceive things from the collective consciousness as relative truths.

            In order to get there, however, we have to first heal ourselves of all the limiting and restraining patterns of belief we have established over a long, long time. We must let go of fear and blame and take responsibility for ourselves and our place in the universe. We must stop fighting to stay stagnant as humans – and we must expand our consciousnesses. Now, in order to do that, however, one must first ensure one is working towards an ever-greater level of conscious awareness of themselves. Discernment becomes incredibly important. This is because, especially at this early stage in the evolution of our collective consciousness, it is very easy to mistaken one’s own thought projections for information from the collective – and it is very easy to misinterpret the universal consciousness speaking though one’s self as either one’s own self or as something “supernatural” or from god or any number of other things. We cannot be forced to connect, or we would not have full awareness of the collective and we may not maintain our individuality (which is also very important to our continued collective evolution). Ancient cultures were much more in touch with their connectivity than we are today, however they did not have the same scientific and technological knowledge we do today. Combining the two is the way forward. Because the system in which we live is so complex, we have a very hard time understanding what impact any action we take locally will ultimately have on the whole. The aggregate results of all of the local interactions occurring between beings is impossible to predict. If we can work to gain connection with our collective consciousness, and be aware of that connection, in a grounded manner then we will have access to a wealth of information that will help us move human evolution forward.  

            In order to develop a more conscious awareness of our collective consciousness (and our part in it – note that, in theory, we would still have concentrations of certain information in various clusters of the overall network of consciousnesses), we must individually gain that awareness. Once enough individuals have such awareness we will consider ourselves to have evolved awareness of collective consciousness as a species. When we tap into collective consciousness and live aware of our connections to and through it we are able to see what we should, as individuals, do if we would like to be the most useful to the collective and to ourselves in the ever-unfolding march of evolution. We can get in touch with what many call the “higher self” and we can get in touch with various “guides” and we can develop our intuition. Intuition is a combination of collective consciousness and individual consciousness, and intuition guides us quite well if we learn to trust it. We still must have discernment. We each have things that we can bring into this world, and we each have the free will to choose not to. Intuition, as it is commonly understood, is only the very tip of the iceberg in terms of what we are able to perceive. We can also learn entire fields, get senses about the future, understand our connections across time and space to other realities, and we can receive information that is generally useful for our individual selves and for all of our collective being as well.