The Tree Sprouts New Branches, Human Consciousness Evolves, the World Is Transformed

One year there was solid bark, the next year a new branch had burst through where no one could have expected it.

I was clearing a field once and liked where a maple tree was growing, but it had been shaped by the old thicket and was bent over toward the light.  A neighbor knew trees better than I did and insisted I was foolish to think it would straighten up and flourish, but I was happy in my foolish hope and left it.

He was right, the old trunk did not change direction entirely, but it sprouted a new branch like the one above, and that branch grew straight up and soon became the new lead trunk.  The old, bent trunk diminished to be a side branch.

We face a crisis in human evolution that threatens to destroy the world that has carried us to where we are today.  We are in danger of turning our planet into a habitat in which humans cannot survive and, along the way there, turning our civilization into a crucible of survivalist fear and violence in which the human spirit cannot thrive.

We do not have at this time the collective will to change our ways and act for the long term well being of our habitat.  We do not take the necessary actions as a society even when we hear the urgent cry of scientists, see the first stages begin of the suffering to come and acknowledge the wisdom of the religious traditions calling us to care and act.

Our hope is that the human spirit can rapidly evolve to have that collective will.

We know it is possible because humanity has evolved through crisis points in the past.  Whole new branches of insight and understanding and new ways of living have sprung from the solid bark of old ways.

We have hope, and that hope resides in our hearing the calling within our hearts as we look at what is happening in the world, and then exploring where that calling leads.  The hope is for our individual transformation that will give us the wisdom and power to transform the world.

We are each part of the tree of life.  A new branch is made up of many cells, it is made up of many different kinds of gifts and skills.  It bears leaves that breathe and change light into energy.  It creates flowers and seeds.  The tree needs all those activities.

A world in crisis needs us all with our different callings, gifts and skills—everything that we have to offer.  The most important things for us each to do now are:

first, to recognize that a universal force has evolved living beings from the simple single cell to the complex human mind and now it needs us to dedicate ourselves to its cause in this time of crisis;

second, to listen as deeply as we possibly can to what that spirit of life is calling us to do as individuals and as a community, using tools of mindfulness and meditation to help us discern what we are hearing;

and, third, to allow ourselves to be transformed, to grow in the direction that the tree of life now needs, to become the fulfillment of our calling to serve the transformation of the world.

This website hopes to help speed us all on that way.  We have no time to lose.