The New Consciousness: Journey of Reconnection

Someone asked me the other day to explain the “new consciousness”. I think the term was coined by one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Eckhart Tolle, to describe the shift in values he perceives to be happening amongst growing numbers of people on the planet right now. As I understand it the new consciousness is a fundamental realization of the interconnectedness of all Life. It’s an understanding that we are all part of One Life, one energy, one consciousness. We are all connected in spirit with each other, and with all other life forms on our planet.

The new consciousness is not a religion; there is no church, no creed, no bible, no hierarchy. The truth is discovered within each soul, through learning to listen to the inner self and to trust subjective experience. From the point of view of the new consciousness, the Christ or the Buddha, or Mohammed, or Allah, or Krishna, were all embodiments of higher stages of enlightened consciousness, of which we are all potentially capable. They were models of our highest potential, great spiritual teachers and inspirers; all way showers rather than the One and Only Way and Truth.

Historically, the realization each of us carries a spark of the divine and is capable of direct knowledge of God was deeply disturbing to the religious authorities, who wanted to maintain political control and keep knowledge, power and wealth in the hands of the ruling elite (themselves). Disempowerment and colonization of one group of people by another has always taken place through repression and destruction of the spiritual beliefs, rituals, and sacred practices that provide meaning and collective identity; in conjunction with theft of land. When we look back through history we can see many examples of this: the destruction of the Goddess religions for example, which were essentially religions of the people and of the sacredness of the Earth, culminated in the persecution and murder of millions of people during the Reformation. The genocide of the Jews during World War 11; the destruction of Native American Indian culture and of the Australian aborigines were similar crimes against the spirit by Europeans, as is the current desecration of the Tibetan Buddhist culture by the Chinese.

When our sense of connection to spiritual reality, and to inner truth, is broken, as it has been through the industrial and post industrial eras, life is rendered sadly soul-less. This disconnection from soul and spirit accounts for much of present day psychological malaise, a kind of emptiness which leads to compensatory addictions, eating disorders, and grabbing for material toys and image enhancers which can never fill up the hole inside.

As I write this I do not feel entirely optimistic about the human condition. It seems there has always been a senseless and unbridled cruelty in humans, alongside our brilliance. I think it is always important to remember these stark truths because they prevent us from becoming complacent and keep in focus the challenge that lies ahead of us if we are to raise the consciousness on the planet to a level where such atrocities of humans against humans and humans against animals cease to exist.

My hope for a Whole New World lies in the “new consciousness” which is a journey of reconnection. I call it the soul journey. It is a peeling away of the outer layers of conditioning, all the rules and beliefs we have swallowed whole from family, school, religion and the media, so that we can hear the still small voice within: our own authentic truth, which paradoxically, when we listen deeply and well, turns out to be universal truth too. The deeper we go into self, the more we find each other in a shared universal humanity. There are many different tools and practices to help us unfold the authentic self: the regular practice of meditation not only helps to clear and focus the mind but also, over time, dissolves the layers of ego which separate us from our deeper self and from each other.

Those of us who follow a non-denominational spiritual path, led from the inside, find our sense of belonging with other similar seekers. We learn to recognize each other and delight in finding each other. We create communities together, although these are not necessarily located in one physical place. Communities come together for a time in groups or gatherings and then disperse and regroup elsewhere. We are a global community. We are of all ages, all colors of skin, all ethnicities, all economic backgrounds and walks of life. When we can’t find each other we feel alienated and different, for from the point of view of more mainstream or materially focused thinking, we appear to be a little crazy, or idealistic dreamers. Connecting with others of like mind and similar energetic vibration is comforting, it feels like home. It’s empowering because we enable each other to be more of who we truly are. Separation from each other is painful and isolating. It takes a lot more effort to keep the flame going alone. Together we spark each other, we create rivers of fire, into which we can launch the survival ark of a Whole New World.

Although I’ve always lived in Western, English speaking countries, the experience of making a new life in four different countries: England, Scotland, New Zealand, and now the USA, has made a global citizen of me. I don’t have a permanent home anywhere so, like the turtle, I take my home with me. Because I don’t have strong ties with my birth family or a lifelong partner, I’ve learned to love the ones I’m with and experience them as my family. Because it gets silly after a while lugging things across the world, I’ve learned to be mostly unattached to material possessions and to release egoic attachments too. There is freedom in this. Following my soul’s purpose in this way has built a sense of trust in my inner knowing and resources. At times I feel lost and abandoned too and I have had to work at trusting my inner calling and valuing myself without many of the external supports considered normal. All of this is teaching me not to judge other people too much, for we all have our own unique path to walk, and we each have different life lessons to learn at different phases of life. It’s never a good thing to judge another person because we cannot walk in their shoes, or hear the unique song of their soul. Yet we are deeply conditioned to judge ourselves, each other, other nations, other ethnicities, other spiritual beliefs. Recently, I discovered judging others is an old, unconscious defense against feeling my own pain. It is easier to blame others than to feel the pain of my own inability to connect; to feel disappointment or loneliness. It is easier to judge, an attribute of the isolating ego, than to open deeper to the healing power of self compassion. The cost of judging is we remain fragmented: wholeness is born from deep acceptance of what is.

As we launched our project, A Whole New World, in January I experienced an almighty stress. In any act of creating it is necessary to hold a clear vision on the one hand, and on the other to have one’s feet firmly planted on the ground in current reality. The closer one approaches the vision the greater the stretch and tension between this and the as yet untransformed present. I have been feeling the expansion and contraction of the birthing process on a daily basis, one day flung wide into a loving universal embrace, the next day shivering on a cold ledge above a chasm of impossibility. At the same time I have felt like the neonate forcing my terrified way through the birth canal. I long to be part of a learning community in which I can say this and someone will reply, “Yes, Rose I know exactly what you mean”, or “I experience something like that too, tell me more”. For me, a purpose of a Whole New World learning community is to develop a common language for our subjective experiences as we make our soul journey through the landscape of global transition. Such a common language and shared mythology reduces our isolation and gives us courage for being here now, and for the work ahead.

Even amongst people of like mind, it is frequently challenging to get along and to accept our differences and idiosyncrasies. It is very challenging to create new ways of being and doing together, in which everyone feels free and everyone is responsible. It’s necessary to value the challenging times as much as the river of fire; to love and nurture our imperfect humanity as much as our sparks of divine intelligence.

Creating a Whole New World is a co-creative dance; an experimental dance; a dance at our Growing Edge, which we will learn one step at a time, as we cheer each other on to greater acts of bold love and death defying creativity.