This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.

“For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

“If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

“But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.”

“God does not play dice with the universe,”

–Albert Einstein

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The Great Turning in Bullet Points

The Great Turning provides a powerful framework for understanding our time within a deep historical context and for defining the collective choice we must now make as a species. These are the key elements:

We humans face a choice between two contrasting models for organizing our affairs: the dominator model of Empire and the partnership model of Earth Community.

After 5,000 years of organizing human affairs by the dominator model, the Era of Empire finally has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain.

A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and a falling U.S. dollar is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life.

While technology plays an important role, there is no technological fix for the human crisis. The underlying problem is a consequence of social dysfunction and the only solutions are cultural and institutional

We now face a choice between a last man standing imperial competition for what remains of Earth’s natural bounty and a cooperative sharing of Earth’s resources to create a world that works for all.

Empire’s power depends on its ability to control the stories by which we humans define ourselves and our possibilities. Whoever controls the prosperity, security, and meaning stories that define the mainstream culture, controls the society.

The key to changing the human course is to displace the prevailing Empire prosperity, security, and meaning stories that define dominator hierarchy as the natural and essential human order, with Earth Community prosperity, security, and meaning stories that celebrate the human capacity to live in cooperative balance with one another and Earth.

Security and social order depend on strong, caring communities based on mutual responsibility and accountability.

Healthy children, families, communities, and natural systems are the true measure of prosperity.

To end poverty, heal the environment, rebuild community, and secure the human future it is necessary to turn from growth to the reallocation of resources as the defining economic priority. Eliminate harmful uses (military, advertising, sprawl, and financial speculation), increase beneficial uses (environmental regeneration, food and energy self-reliance, health, education, and productive investment), and give priority to the needs of those the old economy excludes and represses (the desperate, hungry, and indentured). The transition to a New Economy is foundational to navigating the Great Turning.

All being is the manifestation of an integral spiritual intelligence seeking to know itself through an on-going creative unfolding in search of unrealized possibility.

We humans are a choice making, choice-creating species that can choose to create societies that nurture our higher order capacities for compassion, sharing, and commitment to the well-being of all.

Meaning is found in discovering our place of service to the whole.

To red more of David’s brilliant and compassionate thinking and to subscribe to his blog, click here.

“Hey, remember the good old days when people robbed banks?”
–Swami Beyondananda

Well, it’s finally happened. The evolutionary upwising has broken through the soundless barrier. Ignored and dismissed by the corporate media for weeks, the Occupy Wall Street movement has captured imagination and gained momentum, spawning cousin “Occupy” movements throughout the country. As Scoop Nisker said many years ago, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make your own.”

For the first time in recent history, “we the people” are making news instead of just “taking it.”

And while many organizations – including the Democratic Party – would love to get in front of this parade, this movement belongs to those who have put their behinds on the line on the front lines, and to the 99% of us who have had it with the Golden Rule being overruled by the rule of gold.

“Occupy Wall Street” is a brilliant brand. It’s a poetic reversal of the sad fact that Wall Street has colonized, occupied and pillaged Main Street, as our market economy has devolved into the casino economy where there are a few big winners, and many, many, many losers.

As I have pointed out earlier this year, the transpartisan political work done by my colleague Joseph McCormick indicates that across the political spectrum the vast, vast majority of Americans believe the power of money – particularly when aligned with the coercive power of the state – has become too powerful.

Of course, agreeing on what the problem is doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing on the solution. It would be far too easy for the movement to deteriorate into a laundry list of “demands” that would isolate it as a left wing phenomenon – which is what the powers that be are counting on. The good news is, the public is becoming more immune to divide-and-conquer “impropaganda” and more willing to look at the bigger picture.

And what is the bigger picture?

It’s that every one of those specific issues and grievances that have catalyzed and energized this movement boil down to just one fundamental issue of governance:

Who’s in charge of who’s in charge?

How do decisions really get made, and who rules – really?

A majority of Americans are coming to understand that our democratic republic has become a “mockracy” where the corporate media avoids true issues of governance, and instead focuses on incendiary, divisive issues. And when the conversation does turn to the bigger picture of how policy gets made, each side has a ready-made villain to blame. As with the proverbial blind men describing the elephant, the progressives tend to focus on the “corporate” aspect of the two-headed beast, while the conservatives see the villain as the “state.”

It is only when we see the real problem as the power of money and coercive power of the state working in collusion, that we can see our way to a transcending – and trance-ending – solution: An overriding moral authority of “we the people” that reflects first and foremost the virtues and values that the 90% of us who aren’t sociopaths share in common.

Does America Need A Department of Heartland Security?

Years ago, I had an acquaintance who was a marriage counselor with a unique way of working with couples when they were stuck in intractable positions. Over the years, he had collected and laminated dozens of cartoons that reflected issues where couples have conflict. At the inevitable stuck point, the therapist would call “time” and pull out the cartoon that humorously reflected the very issue the couple was dealing with. In just about every case, the couple would laugh together at the cartoon … and a breakthrough would ensue.

So why am I mentioning this?

In addition to finding something to laugh about, the therapist was doing something that would profoundly change the “state” the couple was in. Instead of staring each other down like Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn, the couple was now looking outward together in the same direction. Equally important, they were looking at another way (albeit humorous) of seeing their situation.

In our current political discourse, we have primarily learned how to be in opposition. Both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement are responses to an unjust and fundamentally dysfunctional political and economic system. Each side sees one side of the picture – and sees the other side as the enemy. But what would it look like for the two sides to “look outward in the same direction?”

In 2003, my friend and “co-heart” Richard Flyer launched the Conscious Community Network in Reno, Nevada to do just that. He began by bringing evangelical Christian organic growers together with urban progressive organic consumers to support local economy, and researched many spiritual and ethical systems to find common “virtues and values.” (You can hear an interview with Richard here.)

Next, Richard began to convene informal gatherings of religious leaders from diverse paths and perspectives, and lo and behold – they began to recognize not just shared values, but shared goals. Despite different – and some might say oppositional – spiritual perspectives, they held key virtues, values and visions in common. These “heart core” values are at the heart of who we are as a people, and as a Humanity.

Perhaps that’s why the notion of “Heartland Security” has been poking at me since “Homeland Security” was launched to empower a 21st century Big Brother under the Orwellian precept that “we require a police state to preserve our freedom.”

However, as Swami has said, “The only way to overgrow Big Brother is by Bigger Brotherhood … and Sisterhood. Only by seeing we are all brothers and sisters in the same Neighborhood, can the neighbors prevail over the hoods.”

So yes, let us celebrate the Occupy movement. Let’s be grateful that the Empire’s bare buttocks are being exposed on mainstream media. Let’s rejoice that a disheartened and too often passive progressive electorate has awoken from its slumber, and that a Nobama movement (moving forward with or without Obama) is taking shape.

Let’s also understand that in these evolutionary times, we may find it difficult if not impossible to go backwards to fix an unfixable system. Those on both sides who want to “take America back” will find the only way to do that is by taking us forward to where we haven’t yet been.

If we want different answers, we’re going to have to ask different questions, so I suggest this as an FUQ (Frequently Unasked Question): What would we like instead?

Instead of a predatory casino economy where a very very few profit enormously (and those at the bottom dream of winning the lottery), what is an economy that would energize and reward good goods and greater goodness?

Instead of a political game open only to multi-millionaires, what would true public participation look like?

Instead of “faith-based vote counting” that relies on hackable computers, how can we institute a completely transparent electoral system?

Instead of an economic and political order that holds the body politic hostage to the Military Industrial Complex, how can we put the need for protection into a balanced context?

These are not just conversations for “progressives” to have, but for every conscious American who is not just fed up with what we have … but willing to take responsibility for designing something else. My dream is that the Occupy Movement is only the first step in awakening that will precipitate these kinds of conversations across the country, across generations, and across ideological lines. From all reports, these conversations are already occurring among the young Occupy folks, because they are already past the ideological positions and seeking something that is radically (from the core) different.

As we stand on the threshold of 2012 and many people wonder what the end of the Mayan Calendar portends, let me offer a suggestion that comes straight from my book with Bruce Lipton, Spontaneous Evolution. Perhaps the “end of the world” is really the end of the old story of “me vs. you” and the beginning of a new story that “we’re all in this together.” This is what evolutionary science suggests, and it echoes the fundamental nugget of gold at the foundation of every religious, spiritual and ethical system – some version of the Golden Rule. It may very well be that both modern science and ancient wisdom are pointing us in the same direction, that at this point where the “me-or-you” system is no longer sustainable, our survival as a species depends on our adopting a new operating system.

May Heartland Security prevail, and then we will have true homeland security.

What do you think? Comments are welcome. Care to see Heartland Security become a reality? To find out more about Heartland Security, please go here.

Grief, you are the slow

Slow rain on the rock

Of pain,

Moonrays

On the open plains

Of remorse and shame.

When you are done

All that silt

Settles into a bed

For our river home.

As you part, light emerges

From the depths

Of all we are

And always have been,

In that order

Not reversed

For heaven to blossom

From the Earth.

JAW

6/26/11

Jack lives on the Big Island of Hawaii. His books of poetry and greeting cards are available at his informative website: www.PoeticHealing.com

The phrase “axial age” has been used to describe the relatively brief period of time — roughly 700 years — when the great religions of the world arose: Hinduism and Buddhism in India; Confucianism and Taoism in China; and monotheism in the Middle East. The period from roughly 900 BC to 200 BC is referred to as an “axial age” because it set the orientation or direction for spirituality for more than two thousand years into the future.

Around the world, the axial age was marked by the growth of trading networks, the rise of large cities, and massive armies equipped with iron-age weapons. This was also a time of extreme violence and widespread warfare. All of the world’s great religions understood that a core challenge was to moderate the violence that emerged from our perceived sense of separation from one another. Despite their great diversity of culture and geography, a common understanding of the need to put compassion at the forefront can be found in all of the world’s wisdom traditions. Here are a few examples:

As you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.
– Christianity
What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary.
– Judaism
No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.
– Islam
Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.
– Hinduism
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
– Buddhism
Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.
– Confucianism
Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.
– Taoism
All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves.
– Native American

As these quotes reveal, the first axial age began with a view of separation and the “other.” In a world of growing individualism and differentiation, the religious emphasis on compassion served as a vital bridge between people. Now, a second major axis with a very different orientation is opening in the world. Religions of separation are becoming religions of communion as we realize there is no place to go where we are separate from the ever-generative womb of the living universe. The second axial age begins with a recognition emerging from the combined wisdom of both science and spirituality; namely, that we are already home — that the living universe already exists within us as much as we live within it. In the words theologian, Thomas Berry, “The universe is a communion and a community. We ourselves are that communion become conscious of itself.” Compassion remains a vital element of spirituality, but it is now being held increasingly within a context of communion rather than separation.

As people around the world move into spiritual communion and empathic connection with the living universe, we see the role of religion differently: Less often do people look for a bridge to the divine. Increasingly, people seek guidance and community in the journey of awakening within the living universe. People want to know there are others on the journey of soul-making and seek guideposts along the way to support the awakening of their experience of unity and intimacy within the universe. Less and less are people seeking only religions of belief. Carried along in this great cultural project of awakening, we are increasingly seeking religions of direct experience — religions of communion with a living universe.

When our aliveness consciously connects with the aliveness of the universe, a current of aliveness flows through us. At that moment — when life meets life — a direct connection between the living universe and ourselves is realized and we have an awakening experience. We no longer see ourselves in the universe, we experience that we are the universe. We do not need to manufacture or imagine awakening experiences. Instead, we only need to experience directly what is already true about the fundamental nature of ourselves as beings who live within a living universe. When the conscious knowing of ourselves becomes transparent to the reality of our participation in an ever-emerging universe, we recognize there was no separation to begin with — we all emerge in communion at every moment within the unity of a continuously regenerating universe.

We are at such a powerful moment in human history with so many interconnected challenges facing us that only big questions like these can move us into a new sustainable orbit. This question can be applied anywhere. How can greed and power be transformed into love, compassion and service? The answers to questions like these could form the basis of a radically positive action plan for humanity to implement through its best and brightest in service to life rather than a total focus on self serving or special interest serving agendas we now see in action.

BEAUTIFUL AND ABUNDANT by Bryan Welch (B&A)

Beautiful and Abundant asks the rare yet essential question, What is your positive vision for the future? Author Bryan Welch urges us to stop focusing so much on the problems we face and instead envision a healthy, vibrant, and sustainable future. Welch is a Kansas farmer who raises goats and cattle on natural prairies, and is the publisher and editorial director of Mother Earth News and Utne Reader. He sets four criteria for a positive vision: It must be beautiful, abundant, fair, and contagious. He accepts his own challenge, offering an approach that he describes as “idealistic and unrealistic,” yet it’s also grounded and bold. His proposals include voluntary population reduction and the preservation of places of natural beauty. His meditations can be quite lyrical. “I’m not concerned with ‘saving the earth,’ ” he writes. “The earth is pretty tough. But I want my children’s children to see this planet and to marvel. I want poets and composers to record their inspirations in books and symphonies. I want our species’ love affair with its beautiful, abundant planet to go on for a long, long time.” May it be so.

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