There was a time not so long ago when I truly believed that there was no hope for humanity. I had received a good education, including an undergraduate degree in literature (with minors in math and physics) and a law degree. I was a licensed attorney working in animal law, which was my chosen field — and the field in which I still work. I was doing things I believed in, working for a cause that I felt good about, and yet I felt hopeless. I felt like, although I was doing the best I could in terms of living a good life and in terms of trying to help push for changes that I could see would benefit at all, I did not think there was really any hope of achieving any of those changes. I would describe my work — and my entire reason for being — as tilting a windmills, a hat tip to Don Quixote. I was relatively happy, and I was plenty caught up in my own addictive behavior and coping mechanisms. What I was “coping” with at the time, really, was the fact that I was living as though I had some hope, though I didn’t really have any and I saw so much inherently wrong with the world and humanity that I had a less than healthy dose of self-hate and hate of the human species going on as well.
Breaking this down to get to the other side was a long process. I would have once said the beginning was the point at which I started the process of consciously looking at, and breaking down, my personal beliefs about myself and the world, which I believe was sometime in 2017. Now I would say that this process had been occurring in me unconsciously for a long time — probably since I lost my hope somewhere in my childhood. The lesson I take from this is that our unconscious usually knows things before we consciously know them, our unconscious and our intuition are looking out for us in that they naturally work to evolve our consciousness, as part of the evolutionary impulse of existence, and we are all here for a reason (just it is not a reason dictated by god and we are not predestined for any one path or life course).
The part of me that I really did have to break down was the part of me that was entrenched in a Newtonian, deterministic, materialistic view of reality. The part of me that had been patterned (or programmed) to believe that humans know how the universe works and understand our place in it — that we are fully evolved, and that this is “it.” The problem there, of course, is that I also saw our wold breaking apart. Our capitalist/consumerist society based on appearances and lies to fool ourselves into somehow thinking we are alright had never made any sense to me. I had never felt like I belonged within it, yet I thought that was all there was. What I needed to see was that this model of reality — the entire paradigm of humanity’s model of the universe and our role within it — could shift.
Before I could see such hope for change in the world — or really remember that I had seen it before — I had to see a hope for change and a reality of evolution within my self and my own consciousness that I had never quite had before. I had been viewing myself for about a decade as an ex-addict. I had basically given myself an excuse to continue to rely on a pattern of coping behavior that, while certainly better than the drugs, unsafe sex, and wide range of other self destructive coping mechanisms I used in high school, was not good for me. It was keeping me afloat. I was making progress in many areas, and have always managed to be relatively authentically myself and relatively successful at endeavors like school and work, but I was not making much progress in terms of inner growth.
I was at a bit of an impasse. I had been working with psychologists on and off most of my life, and I had a pretty robust inner dialogue going. I had (mostly) forgiven myself for the things I had done in high school and when I was young that I could see where not right. I could get into a moment. But there was no where for me to go. Until everything changed.
Progress when one does self work and when one is working to evolve their consciousness comes in ebbs and flows. It does not all come together at once, and there is not some method you can follow that will get you there. It has to come authentically from within. But in order for it to come, space must be made. For me, that has looked like a variety of things, but most influentially some deep self work with psychedelics, learning some breathing and meditation techniques (from which I have developed my own almost daily meditation practice), and chipping away at the patterns of behavior that were the most problematic of my coping behaviors one step at a time. I did not have a picture in mind of where I was going or what I was aiming for.
I spent a couple of solid years working with a therapist to breakdown my drinking and smoking cigarettes habits and to get exercise into my life in a sustainable and meaningful way. I knew these things would be good for me, but I could not have predicted the magnitude of the change that occurred. I was simply working on little bits of myself with the goal of “getting better.” I knew from earlier self-work that I was not going to shame myself into anything, that hard-and-fast limit setting does not work, and that in order for me to make a real change that would last I would have to change the root of what was causing me to feel the need to cope.
At a certain point I had integrated a lot of knowledge from my experience working with my therapist and from my psychedelic journeying. I had begun to see the world in a different way. I recognized that I perceived the world to be different than the materialistic, deterministic ways in which I had been lead to believe it worked. Arriving here my only previous experience with anything “spiritual” was from my semi-religious (Christian) upbringing. I felt certain that the christian religion ultimately had things “wrong.” I saw organized religion as nothing more than an instrument for controlling people. And I did not understand it’s reliance on belief in a singular, all-knowing “God.” When I started to understand what I was getting in touch with — my inner self and also our collective consciousness and the deeper dimensions — I was initially having a hard time articulating any of it because of my fear of (And intense aversion to) anything that even hinted at the religious.
Somewhere in this time period I became consciously aware of the way that my consciousness was interacting with, communicating with, and even playing with the universe as a whole. Synchronicity and symbolism stood out to me everywhere. I started to become aware of a dialogue I had been in my whole life, but had been completely unaware of. I started following the signs. I educated myself through a series of intuitive sits in which I would simply write about how I thought the world worked. I went entirely within — just looking to my inner guidance (or intuition, or my guides) for information. My dreams, my meditation, my trips, and my waking life started to talk to each other — to feel more connected.
I found myself in a world in which being human is not all we are, and in which I found peace and certainty in the fact that a part of us — our spirit, our energy, our higher self, our soul — continues on and is infinite. I learned that time is completely relative and non-linear. I learned that we can non-locally connect with each other and with others from all different times an places, because our manifest matrix reality of three dimensional space and time is only a tiny part of reality. I felt into the deeper dimensions of reality — those explored by quantum physics — and could “see” that even our manifested reality does not work how we have predominately been taught. I started experiencing visions of the future and started to see that I was here to bring forth some small part of it. What this deeper reality screamed at me was that we are all completely connected, integral parts of the same whole — a whole that cannot be visually represented in our three dimensional space with linear time. I imagine it as something like a matrix in which all of our individuated consciousnesses are connected, but this image is still only barely beginning to get at what is. We are all individuated bits of this vast ocean of consciousness. We are all a part of the universe becoming self conscious and experiencing and looking at itself — we are each the universe self-reflecting.
And what did this mean to me in practical terms? It meant that our intention matters, that event the tiniest movement or action will create massive ripple effects across reality, and that we are actually still evolving. I learned that humans are (of course – as seems so obvious to me now) not complete. But that is not to say we are flawed either — simply that we are all on a journey. We are on a journey at every level. We are on a journey through this life where we grow in our human bodies. We are on a journey for our own individuated consciousness’ evolution. The universe is on a journey of its own evolution. Where the majority of humans seem to be now is in a type of conscious awareness that is still self centered and egotistical. The ego we have now is driven by materialism and by our broken concept of wealth and what progress means. There is a different way, and I already felt that different way in my core — had felt that way all my life.
The other way of looking at progress is a more natural, evolutionary approach. Instead of progress measured by our small human goals — goals that largely do not serve us, personally or collectively — we can have progress made by our evolution towards ever greater levels of coherent conscious awareness and towards a greater level of symbiosis between our selves and our planet. The time for fear and power over are finished, and if humanity is to survive and continue to evolve a new paradigm must rise.
In the new paradigm we see ourselves as integral parts of a large complex adaptive system. We know that reductionist science is not going to answer all of our questions, and we know that there are other ways to “know.” We have learned that, as parts of this system, we actually have access to the knowledge of the entire system of consciousness we are part of. We know that as part of evolution into a species of individuated consciousnesses we had to first actually individuate. At lower levels there is only connection — oneness — and at the level we have been predominately at for many centuries now there is only the individual. The individual is alone in the world — only perceiving through a subjective consciousness the objective world. What is coming is a more collective consciousness in humans.
This means that humans are remembering the connection. In the non-western world, as well as in many ancient societies, and certainly in many native american cultures, this connection has not been severed. There are still people who have been in touch with deeper reality throughout human history, but it has not been the dominant direction of the species. Now is the time for a merging of ancient wisdom and modern knowledge and technology. The next step is the end of dualism and the rise of holding at all times a clear sense of self and individuation AND a clear knowing and understanding of our connection to and part within the larger whole.
In my experience, inner guidance or intuition comes from our individual connection to the larger whole — to the field of consciousness that exists at a deeper level of reality. It gives us a way to interface with the wisdom of the universe’s evolutionary path. It gives us access to what is emerging as a result of all of our individual thoughts, intentions, and experiences. It can give us valuable information about what we can do to serve the evolutionary impulse — or “good” in the framework of the rising paradigm. And everyone is in touch with this — whether they realize it consciously or not. The new paradigm emerges from our collective growth.
And, if we do manage as humans to change our direction from trying to stay still and be in control (inhibiting our evolutionary flow) to one of moving with the flow, there is great hope for humanity to slow down and to allow ourselves and our world some time for healing and regeneration. Beyond and along with healing and regeneration comes growth, evolution, and greater future potential for symbiosis and further evolution of consciousness. And this is where I find hope — both in myself as an individual and in our species as the present time-and-place iteration of beings on the cusp of a new level of conscious awareness.