What force is possessing this world that everywhere there is separation? That people’s first reaction is to stand against another, instead of listening for common viewpoints? We have read about this occurring in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, in Africa, in Mexico and in South America. Is it within us? Is it outside of us?
I believe that this reactionary response comes both from inside ourselves as well as from our society. Within ourselves, we have sources of knowing that are in our body and in our mind. Our brain holds all the facts of our lives. We use the brain as a storage system and often times there are loops of information that repeat and repeat. Hence these reactionary patterns are held in neural pathways that are like ruts that we get caught in. If we don’t introduce new information or new experiences into our lives, the brain’s neural pathways remain the same. The individual is caught in reactions that don’t allow time for response. In the last century, doctors and neurologists believed that the brain could not change, so we believed it too. They told us that each section of the brain was responsible for one group of functions and if it was harmed from accident or birth, there was nothing that you could do. Now after over 50 years of the study of neuroplasticity, we now know that the brain is the most malleable organ in the body. When we offer it new information and new experiences, it creates new neural pathways. Areas of the brain that have been damaged may not be able to regenerate, but other areas can take over that function. Areas of the brain that are weak in function can be strengthened so that the individual can learn and function in a more ‘normal’ way. Neuroplasticity shows that we can create new ways of thinking and problem solving.
But is our brain our mind? Yes and no. It is a location where language originates. It holds both historic knowledge and the possibility of new neural pathways connecting new bits of information so that we can solve problems differently. Yet it is not our mind fully. Our mind is both Spirit and Matter. The matter portion is our body and our brain. Not only have we believed that the ideas fed to us by our society are true and uncontestable, we also do not value the wisdom of our body. We are taught from infancy to honor the wisdom of outside authorities instead of our inner responses. ‘No you don’t feel that’, ‘No you don’t think that’, ‘That’s just your imagination’, “That isn’t real’. These are just a few phrases that tell children that their parents/church/school don’t honor what they know of their internal conversation. Consequently, most people turn that level of intuitive knowing off in childhood. That makes for a very unstable system for truth finding for the rest of our lives. We look to the outside authority and we invest authority in people who claim to know what is right for us. How sad, when all along there is a system which can tell us in the moment what is occurring within us and around us. That system is our Sentient Intelligence which is the resonant language of creation that bonds all that exists into one cohesive whole. This is the intelligence that, when picked up on, allows all of life to be a sensual, engaging, vital, and connected experience. Sentient intelligence is often a pressure, a compelling sensation that does not have an emotional component. Many people call it a presence. It is so much more. It is the power of creation itself. It is the universal intelligence of all existence. It is the intelligence that creates a sensation in your body, for exp. what you experience when you look up at the beauty of the night sky, or you touch a baby’s skin. Sentient intelligence awakens in the beauty of human love, in the creative process, and in the tenderness of caring. It is the intelligence of connection. It can also alert us to danger or what would not serve us. We tap into the sentient intelligence through our imagination, through our sensitivities, and through sensation. It is the entry point into communication with your larger Being, other Beings, larger forces and your own journey into your own consciousness. How it presents to an individual is unique to that individual. This is a non-thought experience. There is no logical rational process involved. And once you comprehend how your system communicates with you, you grow to trust its communication in moving forward in your life. It is this system that helps us honor the subtler sensing of emotions, forces and beings beyond our five senses. It is this system that, once we learn to listen to it, can tell us if something is the good next step for us or not. This system is the only truth teller for each of us.
What about those forces outside of us that hold us in separation? At some point in human existence on this planet, humans lost their capacity to be their original design. They lost the capability to communicate with others without language, they lost connection to nature. This separation is a reality that we came to believe was all that life was. For me it is a lens thru which we view life. We only recognize the separation and not the unity of the world of nature which surrounds us. We have known for some time now that this reality of separation is in the throes of losing its control over humanity and it is fighting hard for its survival. It seems to me that this force is making its last stand and we mistake this intensity of reactionary activities of Separation to be an indicator of the future. It is not. Most importantly, we cannot just sit and wait for a reality of unity to take over the world. If we want unity as our dominant reality that we live in, we must take action. If we believe that humans are unique and essential aspects of Creation, we must take action. If we believe that all humans deserve to be honored and supported so that those unique and essential aspects can flourish here, then we must take action. Like the students of Parkland High School, we have to stand for our beliefs about the importance of unity, safety for all, for the inherent dignity of all life, of honoring the essential and unique nature of each and every person, being, animal, plant etc. on earth. Additionally, we must look to what is sacred for us personally and what is sacred for humanity. If we don’t have the sacred honored within us and with others, we lose our capability to be interrelated, interactive and interdependent beings with others in our world.
We are not alone. Because we are part of this earth and because we are both Spirit and Matter, we are one with that which created us. We were created from its own Being desiring to know itself. Yet, I remember years ago when Time magazine had ‘God is Dead’ on its cover. At that point, the idea or concept that was dead was not the ‘intelligence that created all life’, it was the picture of a white man on a cloud who was a punishing God. To me that was a false God created to control humanity, not to love it. We were created out of Love and that love allows us to be what humans were created to be, as well as allowing us to destroy all life on earth. Free choice can both save us and defeat us. It is the action that each person takes that makes the difference for the thriving of future generations of humans, animals, birds, insects, trees, plant etc.
There are hundreds of thousands of suggestions for how we can be all that humans were originally designed to be. The ancients traditions of Taoism, Buddhism, of indigenous cultures all believed that we connected to all life both on this earth and in the heavens. They believed that in creating systems or rituals to build interconnections with these other forms of life, that we could strengthen those connections and keep humans as respectful dynamic co-creators of life on earth. Today some humans are returning to the practices of those old ways and many new ways of using sound, color, breathing, rituals to help us calm ourselves, to connect us to our bodies and our larger minds. Each of us must take time to do something to bring us back to our own balance point. Each of us must make the time to connect to our own values and to live in a more coherent, cohesive and congruent way with all other humans and all life on earth. We each must honor our unique and essential aspects of Creation that we are. We each are called to be whom we came to earth to be. Now is the time to discover all that we are.
Language creates our reality and thus has both limitations and possiblities for creating more unity in our lives. For example, English is a object-oriented language versus indigenous language which are connection oriented. We can learn to use more connection language and we can use writing tools that were created to help us define our world as we crave it to be. One of the practices that is builds on the power of language to create new realities is the Language of Creation. On one view, it is a simple writing template where one write life-enhancing life-generating phrases to bring what we crave for ourselves and others into a reality on earth. On a deeper view, these phrases connect us to our deeper wisdom, to our sentient intelligence and to what created us. These writing practices help create new neural pathways in our brains so that the old reactive neural pathways are used less, and new pathways that lead to response become dominant. These practices help our bodies release the energy from old traumas caught in our solar plexus, making use of that energy to support the manifestation of our cravings. Regular writing of the Creation Exercises moves us out of old historic mental mind thoughts and into new comprehensions of what is possible for ourselves and humanity. They allow us to think our own thoughts instead of just what our society has told us. The Language of Creation was developed by Tantra Maat and Deb Merchant. The In Unity with Creation Institute was created to be a place where people could come to learn the Language of Creation and to be with others using the Language of Creation templates in their lives. The regular use of the Craving and Observing creation templates has changed my life and the lives of many others. Go to www.tantramaat.com or to www.iuwcinstitute.com for more information.
We must move toward unity. The unity of all beings on earth and the Universe. This requires that we be curious, that we listen more to our internal knowing than to others. The brain has been used as a storage area of the old for too long. Let’s make it a connector of new information and new experiences. We must increase the neuroplasticity of our own brains. We must be with others in listening and in action. We must listen within to learn the communication patterns of our own sentient intelligence. We must stand for our values and be with others in cooperation and in striving to create a world that works for everyone, not the special few. We must seek the support of nature and our own Spirits. In these ways, we can discover the power of the original design of humans. In these ways, we can create a world that works for all Beings on this planet. In these ways, we can be in conscious interaction with the larger forces of the Universe and with that which created us, which some call Creation/God/Goddess/Allah/Great Spirit. Humanity cannot afford to let the lens of separation cloud our view of what humans can be, of what the earth can be. Now is the time for change and action.
