Golden Civilization

In All Things Thee to See

The text of this sonnet can be seen at the end of this reflection.  You can download a pdf of the reflection and sonnet here: In All Things Thee to See reflection

This is a poem about seeing, both literally and, more importantly, figuratively—about where we focus our heart and mind and what truth we perceive.

How we see ourselves determines how we treat others, it determines our ethics, so it has enormous consequences in the world.

How we see the earth and our place in it determines how we treat other creatures and the ecosystems that support all life.

The Golden Rule, or loving your neighbor as your self, is at the heart of all the major religions and systems of ethics.

Loving your neighbor as your self requires having both a true perception and a healthy love of your self and the world.

Loving your neighbor as your self does not mean merely that you love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself.  It means waking up to the reality that you and your neighbor truly are one self in very slightly different manifestations.

Loving your self does not mean selfishness or self-infatuation or narcissism, because your true self is not your selfish ego.  Your true self is the spirit of the universe that created you flowing through you, it is the part of you that every other created being shares.

Your self is not your self, it belongs to the universe.  As Teilhard de Chardin saw, our self is not a part of the universe we own wholly, it is the whole of the universe that we own partly.  (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Science and Christ (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp.12-13)

To love your self, then, is to love the whole universe that you share with every other self as one.

We see this truth by shifting our focus away from our old way of looking at our self.

The slogan of John the Baptist and Jesus is translated in most Bibles, “Repent, for the realm of God is at hand.”  The word translated as repent is metanoia in the original Greek.  In this context it means to expand the vision of our heart, mind and spirit to a new perspective that can see God’s realm of true oneness here on earth.

We have to let go of our old focus in order to have a new focus.  We need to empty ourselves of the self-will and craving and clinging of our ego so that we can look more deeply at our true self and the true nature of the universe.

The Christian spiritual path calls this step kenosis, the Greek word used in the New Testament for self-emptying.  Kenosis leads naturally to metanoia. When we empty ourselves of our false self the true self becomes unhidden.

The result of kenosis and metanoia is agape, the Greek word for a love that is God-like and Christ-like, that sees universal oneness and loves its neighbor as itself.  Agape is not based on the worthiness of others, nor is it trying to make ourselves worthy, it is simply allowing the spirit of the universe to flow through us.  It is what we were created to do.

We urgently need to let that spirit flow through us now because our world is in trouble.

Every time we practice expanding and deepening our vision, seeing ourselves and our world more truly, we are moving humanity a step closer to creating the realm of God on earth, a sustainable harmony grounded in justice, compassion and love, what my brother George calls a Golden Civilization.

It all starts with seeing—seeing what is golden in our hearts, and recognizing that same ember in all things.

In All Things Thee to See

A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heav’n espy.
from George Herbert’s “The Elixir”

My woodstove has a window in its door
because it warms the heart to watch the flames.
Right now, my vision through the glass is poor,
part glare, part soot.  My eyes are playing games.
They seek my presence in the vague reflection,
or fixate on the dark, obscuring flaws.
I have to force my eye to shift direction
and choose to see the gold behind the gauze,
beyond this drawn-down blind that judging mind
can make of anything we crave or hate.
Surfaces hold us when what wait behind
are gifts of light upon a sacred grate.
Training my eye to see past its desire
I pass through glass and fill with golden fire.

copyright 2021 Thomas Cary Kinder

Epiphany: Seeing an Urgent Truth Revealed

The word epiphany comes from the ancient Greek verb “to reveal.”  The church holy day of Epiphany celebrates the Magi seeing the presence of God—the spirit that created the universe—revealed in Jesus.  The church season of Epiphany is about recognizing that same spirit’s manifestation not only in Jesus but in other people, in nature and in ourselves.

The word epiphany in everyday use means an “aha!” moment.  To have an epiphany is to have an insight that feels like an urgent truth revealed.

Right now humanity is facing a multidimensional global emergency.  We need epiphanies, and we need the spiritual wisdom that the church tradition of Epiphany can reveal, to help us resolve these crises.

Epiphanies pave the path to a new consciousness.  We can help our entire culture move along that path by sharing our own epiphanies of the Spirit’s guidance, and our insights into the purpose for our lives, and our glimpses of the light shining ahead that beckons us toward a healthy, just and sustainable way of living on earth.

The Hubble telescope is a metaphor for what epiphany calls us to do—peer into the depths of the universe within and around us and send back what we find.

This is an extraordinary half-hour film.  You can watch it by clicking on the image above, but I encourage you to read the background about it first at https://deepfieldfilm.com/.  Particularly read about the composition of the music, which is equal in importance to the breath-taking images.  The music is designed to follow the history of the Hubble telescope and to reflect the experience of humanity receiving Hubble’s epiphanies.  The choir that you hear in the vocal portions is made up of over 8000 voices of all ages from 120 countries, and you will see some of their faces at one point in the film.  It is as if the earth itself is singing, and we are merely the part of the earth that was created to attain this universal consciousness and sing its song.  The video is intended to spark epiphanies in us and be a religious and transformative experience.

We need epiphanies now, both ancient and modern.

The Christian tradition of Epiphany comes from the second chapter of the gospel of Matthew where the Magi follow a star to the child Jesus.  The Magi were a combination of contemplatives and scientists.  They were priestly holy people and wisdom seekers who were steeped in the most advanced observed knowledge of nature.  They believed that the spirit of the universe was trying to communicate with humans so they studied the skies for signs and listened to voices in their dreams.

We can look to similar sources for the epiphanies we need.  The spirit that created nature speaks through other life forms to help us understand what it needs from us in order to sustain life.  The spirit that evolved our consciousness speaks to us from our depths and helps us keep evolving.

We need to be both scientists and contemplatives to catch the epiphanies the spirit is trying to give us now.

We need to cultivate our heart’s core, our inner Golden Room, the place within us each where we meet the spirit, where we find the ability to perceive intuitively what God or the universe is saying.

It takes courage to open ourselves to urgent truths because they can be painful.  The second chapter of Matthew describes how Herod responded when he realized that the Magi had disobeyed him.  He sent soldiers to slaughter all the children near Bethlehem two years old or younger.  Humanity’s failures to follow the spirit’s way of universal love can be excruciating to see.

Even beautiful epiphanies require courage to embrace, though, because they lead us into the unknown, which we fear.  They change our consciousness, and they ask us to act in new ways that go against our cultural norms and comfort zones.  Joseph was warned in a dream to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus to save themselves from Herod.  Imagine that.

The epiphanies of ancient spiritual tradition and modern insight are aligning now like Jupiter and Saturn, like the star of Bethlehem.  They offer hope that we might yet save the earth from the crises that humanity’s failure to follow the way of love has created.

We exist for a purpose.

Why did the spirit of the universe that orders the galaxies and created life on earth evolve human consciousness?  The Hebrew wisdom teachers pondered this question thousands of years ago and recorded their epiphanies in the creation stories of Genesis.

God put us in this garden “to till it and keep it.”

We exist to serve life.

Over the millennia we have come to understand that this means our life, but not just our life.  Our family, but not just our family.  Our nation, but not just our nation.

The most urgent epiphany for the twenty-first century is that the creation is truly one, and we need to declare allegiance to all life, especially to the most vulnerable, including strangers and enemies and the ecosystems on which life depends.  We need to think locally and act locally with love and care, but also with an awareness that humans are no longer residents of their local place alone.

This planet is our one and only garden, a small, fragile home we share with all life.

If you travel to the moon and look back at earth you see that it is a beautiful, lush oasis, and tiny compared to the vast desert of lifeless space.  The nearest planet that has the potential to be a garden like earth is 4.2 light years away, which doesn’t sound that far until you do the math and realize that our fastest rocket traveling 20,000 miles per hour would take around 140,000 years to get there.

This planet holds our only chance to survive.  If we wreck it, we have nowhere to go.  If we cannot learn to get along, if we cannot live ethically, if we cannot love and have compassion for one another here, we won’t do it anywhere.  If we cannot change in this generation, humanity may not exist for another generation to try again to get it right.

Every one of us contributes to a cumulative human impact that now literally outweighs all other life on this planet combined.  An estimated fifty-one trillion microplastic particles pollute the waters of the oceans, and they have been found in the waters of the womb as well, and in the air of our cities and the air of our lungs.

Our impact on the earth in one place can lead to a pandemic that infects all places.  The deterioration of the climate from our way of living threatens every species.

Our allegiance to all life as one makes it the urgent responsibility of us each to act in ways corresponding to the emergency we are in—arguably the greatest emergency humanity has ever faced.

The most urgent thing we are called by the universe to learn now is how to manage a planet.

I was thinking the other day about how the “eco” in economy or ecology comes from a Greek word meaning house.  That night I had a dream that I was trying to sell my home.  An authority—a realtor or banker—kept telling me bad news about my house’s value.  First it was devalued because of racism—it had been built partly by enslaved people.  Then it was devalued because of economic inequity—the paid workers brought home a tiny fraction of the what the bosses received.  Then it was devalued because of environmental exploitation—it both wasted and used too many resources.  The list went on until the value was less than nothing—I would have to pay the next owner of my house to take it off my hands.

To manage a planet we first need to manage our own egos—our selfish ambitions, our fear and greed.  We need to learn how to have a wise, mature level of consciousness that is capable of loving all creation as one inextricably united self.

If we can evolve to that new level of consciousness as a culture, then we will naturally learn how to manage our lives as individuals and as societies in such a way that we nurture the life-sustaining health of every ecosystem.  We will naturally live by the Golden Rule and love of neighbor with compassion for the vulnerable and oppressed.  Racial, economic and environmental justice will naturally happen.

Epiphanies pave the path to a new consciousness.

This leads us back to the need to be like the Hubble telescope, with our heart’s Golden Room wide open to the epiphanies that the spirit of love and life and light is trying to help us see.  We need to expand the vision of our hearts and minds, what the ancient Christian tradition calls metanoia, and we need to share widely and compellingly the epiphanies that our expanded vision sees.

Part of what we need is a new story, based on a new understanding of who we are and what our place is in the universe.  Below is the trailer for another remarkable film, this time using words for its narrative.  If you have not experienced it, prepare yourself for more epiphanies and another step on the journey toward the new consciousness humanity needs.

Click here to find your way to the full film and other related resources.

 

 

 

 

The Most Important Resolution We Can Make

“The feast of Christmas is the celebration of divine light breaking into human consciousness…. The joy of Christmas is the intuition that all limitations to growth into higher states of consciousness have been overcome. The divine light cuts across all darkness, prejudice, preconceived ideas, prepackaged values, false expectations, phoniness and hypocrisy…. The kairos, ‘the appointed time’ is now.… Now is the time to risk further growth. To go on growing is to be at the cutting edge of human evolution.…”  Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ

This is the calling of every human. To paraphrase the popular wisdom of Richard Bach: Here is a test of whether your consciousness is done evolving: if you’re alive, it isn’t.

The quote above by Thomas Keating was from one of his early books.  Late in his life he spoke at a conference as if continuing the thought:

“Jesus goes on to say…, ‘Everybody who’s a human being is a candidate for this and has the resources to do it, if they will take the trouble to learn how to…let God be God in us.’ And so he says, ‘Anyone at all who brings himself or herself to nothing will find out who they are….’ Who are we at the deepest level? Have we a self at all, or are we really the manifestation of the Divine…? So, the plan is to be God in the humblest kinds of ways. That seems to be the program for this life, so why not…put everything into it that you have?”   Incarnation Continua, from the 2015 Return to the Heart of Christ Consciousness Conference, Boulder, Colorado

We need to put all we have into the transformation of our consciousness right now.  It is a matter of life or death for our nation, our species and all life on earth.

The reason why is that “Transformed people transform people,” as Richard Rohr says.  Transforming ourselves is the place to start in our efforts to transform the world.

World transformation is of the utmost urgency.  We need human civilization to evolve to fulfill the wisdom of all the spiritual traditions that agree on certain fundamental principles that make life ethical and sustainable like the Golden Rule, love of neighbor and universal compassion.

We need to evolve to a new collective consciousness that sees the oneness of all people, creatures and ecosystems on this planet and that recognizes our need for justice, equity and a sustainable harmony between all people and between humans and the earth, as the Earth Charter describes.

Therefore we need to evolve to that consciousness ourselves as individuals.

The seasons of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany in the Christian calendar are all about that evolution.

The secular celebration each December 31st includes the ritual of making resolutions.  The most important resolution we can make right now is to dedicate ourselves to the process of personal and world transformation. In other words:

Resolve to evolve.

The wisest have been calling for this since the days of the Hebrew Prophets, Greek philosophers and spiritual teachers in Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Taoist and Indigenous traditions.

Gus Speth quotes many recent voices including Vaclav Havel, Aldo Leopold, Erich Fromm, Thomas Berry and Mary Evelyn Tucker in his lead essay in the book, The Coming Transformation: Values to Sustain Human and Natural Communities.

Gus says, “What these authors and many others are saying is that today’s challenges require a rapid evolution to a new consciousness. That is a profound conclusion. It suggests that today’s problems cannot be solved with today’s mind.”

So how can we evolve as quickly as we must, both as individuals and as a global culture? Continue reading →

Our Task

If you haven’t seen this beautiful short film, please give yourself a treat and spend a half hour immersed in its quiet drama and wisdom.  You will be glad you did.  It puts the rest of this post in proper perspective.  The earth is tiny, it is our one and only home, and we will survive only if humanity realizes this and acts as one people, at one with our planet, making it a safe, healthy home equally for all.  If we can undergo that transformation of our heart and consciousness, as these three astronauts did, we will transform the world.

 

Our Task by Thomas Cary Kinder

Dedicated to Gus Speth, who formulated the wisdom on which this post is based in his essay in The Coming Transformation: Values to Sustain Human and Natural Communities. The concept and structure of sections i. through vi. are his, the words are mine.

Prelude: We Responded

Let future descendants of the human race say
that when our generation saw the unfolding ruin
of the stable earth that had made life possible
and the rising threat to the free,
just, equal, democratic societies
that humanity had evolved over hundreds of years,
we responded by laying down our lives to save
all that goodness, and to become better.

i. We Shared Our Awareness of the Threat

We were crisis-driven, and aware that to change course
we needed to change hearts and minds.
We were aware that our established ways had failed
and the spiritual wisdom of the right way to live
had become not an ancient distant dream
but an urgent practical necessity.
We saw that the past visions of an ideal future
had to be fulfilled in our present moment
or life on earth would not survive.
We used our voices, nonviolent action
and all forms of art
to raise awareness of the threats
and to unite ourselves
in shared compassion and concern.

ii. We Chose Wise Leaders

The leaders we followed sought not self-aggrandizement
or partisan advancement, but humble wisdom,
aware that no one person or side could solve this alone,
that we needed to work together across divides,
and that we needed more than human power,
we needed a higher power, the spirit of life,
the way of nature within and around us, to help us evolve.
Collective wisdom showed each practical step of the path;
courageous leaders led us boldly down it.

iii. We Gained New Vision and a New Story

We realized humanity could not make needed changes
without a changed consciousness that could see our oneness,
an enlightened way of perceiving ourselves and all life and earth,
a deeper understanding of what the meaning of life is
and what humanity could become.  We needed to discover
how we could fulfill as a society the ideal love of neighbor
that spiritual and philosophical leaders had taught
for three thousand years. We needed a new story
of the journey of the universe rooted in ancient traditions,
letting their shared dreams guide and inspire us,
and tapping into advanced social, physical and life sciences,
opening doors of pragmatic possibilities unimagined until now.

iv. We Formed a United Movement toward a Shared Goal

We saw ourselves as one people on a journey
out of exile across a wilderness to a new Promised Land.
We saw that we were working toward the same goal,
whether our first concern was one ecosystem or another,
one cause of justice or another, one tribe or another,
we were one people, one movement,
and we needed one another.
We could get there only as one.

v. We Communicated Compellingly

We used all the skill and technology that we had.
We communicated the new positive vision and story,
the urgent calls for action, tirelessly, creatively, by word of mouth,
by example, by broadcast and book, by worldwide web.
We shouted it from rooftops, from street corners,
from every pulpit and lectern. Children found their voice.
They led when adults remained dumb.

vi. We Created Working Models, Living into the Vision

We lifted up existing models.  We created new models.
We began living as if already in the Promised Land,
as if already one, as if already nonviolent, harmonious,
just, equal, compassionate, loving, kind.
We began building a golden civilization
brick by brick by the golden rule
and we did not stop until the ancient dream at last
stood gleaming on a restored and rejoicing earth.

Postlude: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for…”

Let future generations look back from that renewed world
and say that we were the ones
who made the change, who made it possible,
who threw off the shackles of selfishness, of ego,
of competitive pride and greed,
and who took the leap into the realm of love
that humanity was born to create.
Let them say that the crises of 2020
were the final labor pains of a new world,
the final push.

That urgent push is our task.

An Appreciation of George Kinder, April 2, 2018

My brother, George Kinder, is a map-maker—he has been working on maps to the transformations that we need as individuals and as a world for decades.  I am celebrating his birthday by republishing this analysis of how his life work is contributing to changing the world for the better.

George has been recognized in national publications as one of the 35 most influential people in financial services, one of the top Icons & Innovators in financial planning, and the first of 15 transformational advisors whose vision most changed the industry.  He has revolutionized financial advising over the last thirty years, training over 3000 professionals in 30 countries in the field of Life Planning.

George is a spiritual teacher as well, and although his maps have been designed with financial Life Planners in mind, they have broad applicability. Hundreds of financial planners are now helping clients from all walks of life explore their deep heart’s core, their Golden Room.  The clients are living in, from and for the dreams or callings that they find there.  (A 2016 New York Times article described how people are following the Life Planning map to a meaningful retirement.)  Often these Life Plans contribute directly or indirectly to a healthier family, community or world.

George’s maps can be applied equally well to all facets of our lives and across the spectrum of our developmental lines or multiple intelligences, not just the financial realm.  All his maps lead us through the Golden Room of inner transformation to the transformed culture he calls the Golden Civilization.  Below I will look at the contribution that four of his books make to that movement.

Continue reading →

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Saving the World Step Four

photograph by Lesley Wellman

It takes a complex set of tools and practices to make a simple basket, moving from log to woven splints to its bent and polished handle.  Every tool in this workshop has been carefully chosen by the master craftsman.  He requires that it be powered by the human body, be beautiful as well as effective, and be proven by traditional use to do the job required.  The integrity of every detail of the process and the practiced skill working with these tools are reasons why you can find this basketmaker’s work in the Smithsonian. The timeless beauty and ethic of care are why you can find people walking through his workshop with a look of joyous wonder on their faces.  Watching him work inspires creativity and hope.  A magical inner transformation takes place. George Kinder writes, “If you want a golden civilization, you must start with what is golden inside of you. If you want a civilization that will thrive for a thousand years, you must start with what is timeless inside of you.”  The workshop of Golden Room and Golden Civilization needs to be like this workshop of golden baskets.  We need to have the same kind of integrity and beauty in our process in order to work the same kind of magical transformation.

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps toward Saving the World

Here is the outline of this series of related posts:

Step Four:

The premise of this series is laid out in Step One, expressed through the words of many leaders confronting a range of issues that threaten our civilization and life on earth.  Here is another voice that sums up their consensus: Vaclav Havel said, “Without a revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing is going to change for the better.”

If all these voices are saying that we cannot make the progress we need to save the world and transform human civilization until we have a new consciousness, then doesn’t it make sense that we all focus in a serious, smart and expeditious way on attaining that consciousness?  No one is at too high a level today—we all could help the world by maturing further.

Steps Two and Three have talked about what would be needed to move the necessary percentage of the population to this new consciousness, and how we could get there.  Step Four completes the series by suggesting tools that can “facilitate the process of inner transformation,” in Thomas Keating’s words.

The tools and practices listed below vary in how much they require of us in order to be effective.  Some take an investment of time, energy or money initially and then become incorporated into our daily lives with minimal additional exertion.

They all require a degree of commitment and discipline.  This is a movement.  Movements for social change require only small groups of citizens to change the world, but they need to be committed citizens.  There is no getting around that.  We see that this work is needed.  We could be one of the ones to do it.  The choice is forced upon us.  We each need to decide to be part of the solution or not.

Below are some of the tools and practices that can help raise us to the new consciousness, higher developmental stage and deeper spiritual state the world needs.   Continue reading →

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Saving the World, Step Three, Part C-2

Follow the Map: Structural Details

This great maple is growing in a landscape that the last glacial age scraped bare.  It feeds on soil formed over ten thousand years of patient building through cycles of life and death, decay and new birth.  The maple has found its own way to develop and create the structures it needs to reach the light.  It is a gift to countless lives, from birds and squirrels to spiders and beetles to mosses and microbes.  It inspires the humans who stand under it in awe.  Look at what is possible on this earth.

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps toward Saving the World

Here is the outline of this series of related posts:

Step Three is to study the map that leads us individually and culturally to the new, higher stage of consciousness that we now need—and to commit ourselves to follow that map.

Structural Details

The new consciousness and the ideal society it alone can create may have sounded wildly optimistic and out of reach in the past, but there are three reasons why we can and must leave that skepticism behind.

First, it is clear where the earth and human civilization are heading if we do not undergo this transformation.  Significant numbers of leaders and citizens support the idea that we must change in order to survive, and recognize that we need a new, higher consciousness in order to do so.  The suffering that will come of our failure to attempt it is unconscionable.  We simply must.

Second, abolishing slavery once sounded wildly optimistic and out of reach.  So did equal rights for women and the nonviolent liberation of India from the British Empire.  The transition from the Dark Ages to the Enlightenment was unimaginable.  Many times in history the human heart and mind have undergone rapid  transformations that seemed impossible before they happened.  It can happen again.  And it must.

Third, we are making rapid strides forward in many fields relating both to the Golden Room and the Golden Civilization.  We have the great spiritual and secular awakening of the contemplative path of meditation and mindfulness.  We have many brilliant insights, discoveries and innovations in the inner developmental process.  I will talk about two of the pioneers in this work below.  We also have outstanding leadership working on every problem threatening civilization and the earth today.  This series is about achieving the all important new consciousness, but the technical and advocacy work being done is obviously essential.  We have facets of the Golden Civilization vision emerging in every field.

Fear and doubt are understandable and justified in the face of escalating threats, but we cannot afford to let them control our response.  We need to acknowledge them, have compassion for them and let them go.  We need to free our hearts and minds to be transformed to a new consciousness, and that means employing tools like positive psychology and appreciative inquiry, and celebrating that we have the maps and tools we need to speed our transformation.

Here are some of the structural details from two leading thinkers who have dedicated their lives to helping people reach a new consciousness.

George Kinder

My brother, George Kinder, is a map-maker—he has been working on the maps we now need for decades.  George has been recognized in national publications as one of the 35 most influential people in financial services, one of the top Icons & Innovators in financial planning, and the first of 15 transformational advisors whose vision most changed the industry.  He has revolutionized financial advising over the last thirty years, training over 3000 professionals in 30 countries in the field of Life Planning.

George is a spiritual teacher as well, and although his maps have been designed with financial Life Planners in mind, they have broad applicability. Hundreds of financial planners are now helping their clients explore their deep heart’s core, their Golden Room.  The clients are living in, from and for the dreams or callings that they find there.  (A 2016 New York Times article described how people are following the Life Planning map to a meaningful retirement.)  Often these Life Plans contribute directly or indirectly to a healthier family, community or world.

George’s maps can be applied equally well to all facets of our lives and across the spectrum of our developmental lines or multiple intelligences, not just the financial realm.  All his maps lead us through the Golden Room of inner transformation to the transformed culture he calls the Golden Civilization.

Continue reading →

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Saving the World, Step Three, Part C-1

Follow the Map: Story and Sketch

Trees have inner maps that enable them to grow out of situations that look impossible.  We do, too.  Let climate change or nuclear winter render earth uninhabitable for our species, and still a remnant may find a crack in that barren landscape to nurture a fragile survival.  We may not have much time left on the Doomsday Clock, but the good news is that we have something trees do not.  We have brains that can cultivate insights to solve problems, we have entrepreneurial spirit and technological skill that we can harness.  We may need a new consciousness in order to solve the problems that are threatening our survival, but we have knowledge and tools to “facilitate the process of inner transformation” (Thomas Keating’s phrase for Centering Prayer).  What we need are people who are willing to pursue the world-saving work of developmental growth toward that new consciousness.  Rarely have these questions been more poignant: “If not us, who?  If not now, when?”

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps toward Saving the World

Here is the outline of this series of related posts:

Step Three is to study the map that leads us individually and culturally to the new, higher stage of consciousness that we now need—and to commit ourselves to follow that map.

Story

This story comes from one of the authors of The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain.  It was included in an article in The New Yorker in 2008 about research on how the human brain generates insights.

Researcher John Kounios told about a Zen Buddhist meditator who participated in a large study.  They were given a set of puzzles to solve.  The Buddhist performed extremely poorly at first as he strained his focus, but then he shifted his approach and used meditation skills to relax and unfocus his mind.  The article said he became “an insight machine,” and solved puzzle after puzzle.

We can cultivate insights.  We have maps that we can follow to new, higher levels of consciousness that may yield the insights we need.

Sketch

Here is a sketch of one such map.

It begins where we are now.  We face problems that we either lack the insights to solve, or that we know how to solve but lack the insight how to create sufficient political support.  The problems are urgent and threaten the survival of the world as we know it, even the survival of our race.

Already they are causing massive suffering: climate change and other environmental devastation from a variety of human causes; economic inequality and poverty; wars that unjustly kill or dislocate innocent civilians indiscriminately; the use or threatened use of cyber, biological, chemical and nuclear weapons; the rise of totalitarian and fascist movements, the weakening of democracy and entrenched polarization; hatred and oppression of people based on race, religion or other surface differences; and the escalating refugee crisis caused by many of these problems.

This map leads from here to the destination of a new consciousness that can save the world from these problems and create a Golden Civilization.

Continue reading →

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Saving the World, Step Three, Part B

Follow the Map: Review and Overview

The emergence!  See the photo and caption in Part A for the hopeful metaphorical meaning in this.

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps toward Saving the World

Here is the outline of this series of related posts:

This is Step Three, Part B, Review and Overview.  Please see Step Three, Part A that gave an Image, Metaphor and Introduction to this step.

Review of Steps One and Two: 

The goal is to save the world and create what my brother George Kinder is calling the Golden Civilization, a society that can live sustainably with freedom and sufficiency, justice and peace for all.

Step One toward that goal is to identify what is needed to overcome the many obstacles in its way.  That step was summed up succinctly by Gus Speth, who wrote, “Many of our deepest thinkers and many of those most familiar with the scale of the challenges we face have concluded that the transitions required can be achieved only in the context of what I will call the rise of a new consciousness.”

In other words, the path to a Golden Civilization starts in the Golden Room.  The Golden Room is our truest self, our heart’s core.  We live increasingly in, from and for the Golden Room as we move to higher levels of consciousness and deeper spiritual states.  It is the place within us where we find the intuition, insight and creative connections we need in order to fulfill our individual callings and solve seemingly impossible local or global problems.

The Golden Room is also the place where we find our oneness with all.  Universal empathy and unconditional compassion grow out of the sense of oneness.  Empathy and compassion lead to support for the changes that saving the world requires.  Imagine how seeing our oneness and having compassion for all would change the way our society looks at climate change or economic inequality or war, no matter how far from our back yard it was happening.

We do not need to raise the consciousness of a majority to have oneness become the dominant perspective.  Step Two in this series showed that we need a committed minority of only 10% that sees the world from a new, higher level of consciousness in order to make the transitions required.

The first thing we need in order to implement solutions to the problems threatening the world is the higher consciousness that can both produce those solutions and engender sufficient political support to enact them.  (See the story at the end of this post for a practical example of this.)

Overview of Step Three:

So how can we move 10% of the population to that higher level of consciousness as quickly and directly as possible?

Continue reading →

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Saving the World, Step Three, Part A

Follow the Map: Image, Metaphor and Introduction

The beech leaf shone with a green-gold light on sunny mornings in its spring, filling the woods with a feeling of youthful hope.  Now the natural cycle has brought it to this, as happens to all, from single cells to civilizations.  It hangs on, drained of vitality, weather-beaten and wilting.  Meanwhile the bud is swelling above it, about to burst forth with new life.  The old leaf feeds the new with the light it transformed and stored in its roots.  The natural cycle is not only birth, life and death, it is also to move through that process over and over, each time building on the past and growing higher, stronger and filled with more light than ever before.  That is the eternal hope the universe has planted in the heart of all things.  We need to keep living in and for that hope.  It is The Map.

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps toward Saving the World

This is Step Three, Part A the third in a series of posts about the relationship between the Golden Room we each have within us and the Golden Civilization that we need to create in order to live sustainably on earth with freedom, justice and peace for all.

Here is the outline of this series of related posts:

The Golden Room is our truest self, our heart’s core, the place we live increasingly in, from and for as we move to higher levels of consciousness and deeper spiritual states. It is the place of self-emptying at the heart of our self where we find our oneness with all, and find the gifts we have to offer for the transformation of the world.

In Step One of this series we heard many voices—the Hebrew prophets and Hindu Bhagavad Gita, Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi and leaders in many fields today—calling us to transform ourselves to a higher level of consciousness as a necessary first step to the world transformation that our survival requires.

In Step Two we saw that a surprisingly small percentage of transformed people could make the difference to save the world.

The third step’s four posts will look at a map to see how we can get from here to the needed higher consciousness.  It requires that we make attaining a higher developmental stage a priority.

The final installment of this series will present the Fourth Step, which is to adopt practices and tools to reorder our lives to follow this map and speed our inner and outer transformation.  We will get there if we commit our time and energy—as we need to do, if we want to be part of the solutions that will save this world we love.

You can continue reading this series in order by clicking here.

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps Toward Saving the World, Step Two

It does not take many golden-hearted hawkweed blossoms in a patch of grass to sweep our hearts up into an enlightened state of attentiveness and joy.  The golden light changes us.  It shines through us and brightens the people around us.  It does not take many blossoms to transform a whole field.  It does not take many enlightened people to transform the whole world.

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps toward Saving the World

This is the second in a series of posts about the relationship between the Golden Room we each have within us and the Golden Civilization that would arise if we each lived in, from and for our Golden Room or heart’s core or truest, deepest self.  In Step One we heard many voices saying this in different ways.  Here we will show that a surprisingly small percentage could make the difference to save the world.  Step Three will show a map of how we can get from here to there.  Step Four will talk about some of the tools and practices we can put to work right now to speed the transformation.

Here is the outline of this series of related posts:

Step Two:

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our planet teeters on the brink of annihilation.”  That statement was true when he said it.  It is much truer today.  Of all the possible solutions King could have proposed to bring us back from that brink, he said, “This hour of history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists.” 

That sounds like a weak answer to planetary annihilation, but the anthropologist Margaret Mead reassures us, saying: “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Science has recently confirmed this.  In 2011 a group of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute scientists did a study funded by the United States Army and Navy research offices.  Their study documented the existence of a tipping point of public opinion.  They found that the culture will make a dramatic and rapid reversal when a committed and passionately dedicated minority becomes 10% of a society.

Step Two toward saving the world and establishing a Golden Civilization is for 10% of our society to fulfill Step One.  That step was summed up by Gus Speth who wrote, “Many of our deepest thinkers and many of those most familiar with the scale of the challenges we face have concluded that the transitions required can be achieved only in the context of what I will call the rise of a new consciousness.”

Ken Wilber has written an extremely important book not just for religion but for making “the transitions required” in every field to save the world.  The book is The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions.  Wilber refers to social research showing that already 5% of our society has attained the “new consciousness” Speth says must arise.  Wilber echoes the RPI study saying that if we can achieve 10% we will see a rapid transformation that will bring the changes in consciousness needed to solve the problems that threaten civilization and the planet today—things like climate change, weakening democracy, racial hatred and injustice, increasing economic inequality and war.

People have much work to do who are in the 5% today, striving in every field where civilization and the planet are threatened, but they also have this most important task: helping another 5% rise to a higher developmental stage and deeper spiritual state of transformed consciousness.  We need more people with a more enlightened perspective on the world, and we need them fast.

The next post in this series, Step Three, will talk about how we can get there, and Step Four will offer tools and practices that can cultivate the Golden Civilization where the new consciousness must arise, within the Golden Room.

Ken Wilber says that simply being aware that there is a higher stage and deeper state of consciousness that we can attain is “psycho-active.”  Just knowing about it moves us closer to it.  The RPI study says the 10% needs to be “committed and passionately dedicated.”  So I urge you to spread the word about this in every way you can, including clicking on some of the buttons below all four of these posts.

Thank you for doing all you are to bring about the transformation we so desperately need.

You can continue reading this series in order by clicking here.

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps Toward Saving the World, Step One

This oak was cut down years ago.  Its structure remains, but is decaying and breaking.  Its heartwood core is gradually softening and rotting within a circle of cracking bark.  Meanwhile, what is left of the oak collects fallen leaves and galls.  It holds acorn shells and droppings that squirrels or birds have left.  Each humble contribution will feed the roots and heart of a future tree that will rise from the same ground.  All that has ever fallen on the oak will live on in what comes after, including light and rain and the remaining essences of other lives.  The new tree could not exist without all the lives and ways that have gone before.  They are its hope, as it is theirs.

The Golden Room, A Golden Civilization: Four Steps toward Saving the World

This is the first of several posts about the relationship between the Golden Room we each have within us and the Golden Civilization that would arise if we each lived in, from and for our Golden Room (meaning our truest, deepest self, our heart’s core).  The second step will show that all of humanity does not have to take these steps to transformation, a surprisingly small percentage of us could make the difference to save the world.  The third step will show a map of how we can get from here to there.  The fourth step will talk about some of the tools and practices we can get busy putting to work right now to speed the transformation.

Here is the outline of this series of related posts:

In this post we will hear about the first step from many voices.

Step One:

The first step toward saving the world is recognizing that it is from the cultivation of the Golden Room that a Golden Civilization will arise.  As Gus Speth summarizes the collective wisdom below, we need the rise of a new consciousness, a transformation of the human heart, a new way of seeing in order to bring about a major cultural change and a reorientation of what society values.

We KNOW this! We have heard it over and over. Yet we have not taken it seriously enough to ask how, and to set out as a people to accomplish it.

Now we must.  We have no other choice and no time to lose if we want to protect what we love and save what we depend on to survive and thrive.

We know this step because we have heard our wisest elders saying it increasingly stridently.

Heeding them and asking ourselves what we can do in our lives to follow their direction is the first step toward saving our world.

We can do this.  The following three posts will talk about why this can work and how we can do it.  Thank you for doing your crucial part.

First, some recent voices:

Gus Speth sums this crucial wisdom up beautifully in his book The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability.  Speth co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council and World Resources Institute.  He Chaired President Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality and served as a senior advisor to President Clinton’s transition team.  He was Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.  Here is what he says:

“Many of our deepest thinkers and many of those most familiar with the scale of the challenges we face have concluded that the transitions required can be achieved only in the context of what I will call the rise of a new consciousness. For some it is a spiritual awakening —a transformation of the human heart. For others it is a more intellectual process of coming to see the world anew and deeply embracing the emerging ethic of the environment and the old ethic of what it means to love thy neighbor as thyself. But for all it involves major cultural change and a reorientation of what society values and prizes most highly.”

George Kinder, the founder of Life Planning and author of The Seven Stages of Money Maturity and Transforming Suffering into Wisdom: Mindfulness and the Art of Inner Listening and an upcoming book on the Golden Civilization:  “If you want a golden civilization, you must start with what is golden inside of you. If you want a civilization that will thrive for a thousand years, you must start with what is timeless inside of you.” Continue reading →