Transcending Symbolic Consciousness

Transcending Symbolic Consciousness

Symbolic consciousness has seized control of the evolutionary dynamics of life on Earth and deeply impoverished the planetary ecology. – Peter Reason

Imagine a world without language, images or the written word. Imagine an organism with awareness of self, a sense of community and yet no way to share their world with another. An intense inner world fueled by instinct and survival and yet a consciousness that understands our connection. It was out of this that the world as we know it evolved today.

We have always been connected. The same ingredients that gave birth to the cosmos are the same things that we are made of; we are of the stars. If we were to look at the history of the universe in an hour time frame, humans have only existed in the last minute on earth. Yet we have changed the earth in amazing ways. Recently, I watched an eye-opening documentary that helped me to understand how our earth evolved into this increasingly complex world that we now live in. In Journey of the Universe, they answer the question, how did this happen? What was the catalyst that propelled civilization into exponential growth and where do we go from here?

Evolution of the Cosmos

Fourteen billion years ago the universe exploded with life in what some scientists call “Goldilocks Conditions”, any hotter or cooler, and the expansion would have quickly imploded or collapsed back into nothing. In these perfect conditions, a universe was born. Around 4 and a half billion years ago the earth and our sun were formed. Again, our planet seemingly divinely guided in its creation, as the perfect conditions conspired that resulted in our creation. The earth at this point was governed by what Dr. Frank Heile would describe as a primary consciousness. This is the consciousness that permeates the natural world. If we think of it like a computer, it would be a parallel processor giving rise to the self-organizing dynamic that scientist now believe is the natural order of things. This primary consciousness has a present moment awareness, that created patterns and intelligence that coded all of life. Yet, it wasn’t until the time of man that things began to grow in ever more complex ways as we burst beyond this primary consciousness into symbolic consciousness. While there is much debate about what triggered this, there is one very interesting theory posited by Brian Thomas Swimme in Journey of the Universe

The Birth of the Inner Child

Something happened within the mammals, the divine feminine energies arose and mammals began to nurture and nourish their young. We gave rise to the inner child. As humans, we let our children be creative and playful for many years beyond all other creatures. Some believe that this prolongation of childhood is what led to our exponential complexity. Maybe it was the nurturing of our ‘right brains’ that brought our species to new heights and eventually led to the development of what neuroscientist call our intuitive brain. But there is more to this story. While the prolongation of childhood may have allowed for increased complexity, it was also our development of language and writing that changed the game for our species and what we were able to accomplish.

The Rise of Symbolic Consciousness

Symbolic consciousness is a world created from symbols that evolved into language and writing that allowed humans to express their inner world with the outer world. Just as today, all words are symbols for something much deeper. Our self-awareness allowed us to create a symbolic world in order to pass on information, ideas, and mythology. As we began to create the world around us to symbolize what has existed within, we began our journey of symbolic consciousness.

For billions of years, the earth was guided by the principals of self-organization or this primary consciousness. Now instead of just passing along our genetic coding and patterns to subsequent generations, we were now able to pass along our experience. Allowing us to teach each other complex instructions on how to make things by stringing together long-chain symbols. As Dr. Frank Heile and some explained, we created a hierarchal structure and/or chains of these symbols, which allowed us to live and thrive in groups. Giving us the opportunity to make tools and pass on information about hunting and the world we lived in without that information being lost from one generation to the next. We began creating energetic exchanges as we moved more and more of our experience in the external world. We identified with ourselves as “I” and “Me”, and in order to understand ourselves, we became something relative to something else. Creating an identity that was a measure of another’s perception, again a reflection of the outer world and less of an understanding of our essence.

Symbolic Consciousness in the Modern Age

In addition to increasing complexity in ideas and thought, this created a positive feedback loop or an amplifying loop. We would see something, identify and integrate it into our culture and then create more of it. With this, our minds focused on rehashing the past and the inventing of the future. And so began our love affair with linear and logical thinking, building one idea on the foundation of the last. As Brian Thomas Swimme would explain it, our collective consciousness was giving birth to more symbols and those would, in turn, magnify our collective consciousness.

How this developed over time is we began to value the external, ‘objective reality’ over our inner knowing. Science then began to dictate our truth; everything we could quantify, and rationalize became our dogma. The qualities of the divine feminine and inner child were diminished. Marketing and commercialization preyed on this externalized reality, creating attachments and suffering. It also created another glaring problem; we used these measures to dominate nature instead of move with it. No longer were we part of the natural world, our aim was to control it for our own benefit.

Coming Full Circle

Since we understand now how symbolic consciousness has propelled us forward exponentially in every way, what is it going to take to come full circle? If symbolic consciousness is the amplification of the external world, it is time to bring it back to our center. What is going on within each one of us when we cultivate an inner awareness? There are so many things that take us out of this space, especially the technology of our smartphones and advent of social media; we need to make a concerted effort to move back within. Dr. Jeffery Martin would call this non-symbolic consciousness.   It is a non-dual awareness, where one consciously embraces solitude, stillness, and quiet contemplation. It is a state that is ripe for mystical experiences birthed from the cultivation of mindfulness.

We have been living life looking through a keyhole, piecing the puzzle together, asking the how questions. It is now time to embrace the why? It is time to rise to a new level of self-awareness. One that can expand large enough to see where we have been, what we have created, and reflect on our need to control and dominate. As Brian Thomas Swimme expressed about the self-organizing nature of the universe. “Life learns”. It is time for us to live again in harmony with our world, as sustainability is harmony in action.

5 Suggestions to Cultivate Non-Symbolic Consciousness

  1. Set boundaries around your use of technology
  2. Meditate
  3. Ecstatic Dance
  4. Be in nature
  5. Spend part of your day in silence

If you enjoyed this post, check out the Chaos & Light Podcast on Why We Aren’t Here to Learn: Challenging the Earth School Perspective.


(c) Can Stock Photo / thefinalmiracle

Seeing Beyond the Lens of Patriarchy

Seeing Beyond the Lens of Patriarchy

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any”. ~Alice Walker

I remember the moment that I really understood how my lens of patriarchy affected me and how it altered the way I showed up in the world. I was in the midst of reading the Women Who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and I could feel a fire rising inside me. I felt the need to sit in deep meditation and witness as generations of suppression, repression, and helplessness moved as waves of emotion through my body. I cried for the harming of societies past who felt the brunt of a system much more deliberate than the version I was currently living. I grieved deeply as I saw the actions of myself and generations through this understanding. Then I sat with the revelation that I had never really understood the lens from which I viewed the world.

The Divine Energies

If I look at that experience carefully, it wasn’t just the suppression of women that brought me to such depths or the past hurts they’ve endured, it was much deeper than that. It was the diminishment of many of the values and ideals that I held dear. Aspects of the Divine Feminine that as a society we accepted as less than. In our current climate, it isn’t just about the suppression of women but about the imbalance of both the feminine and masculine energies. It’s about what we have decided is worthy and noble and what isn’t. The Divine Feminine is the embodiment of emotion, creativity, flexibility, and intuition. She is receptive, inclusive and mysterious and yes, even dark. The Divine Masculine is about loyalty, logic, reasoning, strength, and security for all. In our Western culture, we favor many of the characteristics that are inherently masculine and diminish those that are more aligned with the Divine Feminine. Though, in our patriarchal system, neither are well represented.

This isn’t a conversation about gender though it is through gender roles and stereotypes that the conversation has become muddied. It is about creating a new paradigm that benefits everyone, and this requires that we recognize and value both the masculine and feminine that exists within every individual and every culture. These energies have nothing to do with gender and everything to do with restoring balance, harmony, and wholeness. It is time for us to re-evaluate what it is we value and what brings us to the world we want to create. It is also time for us to understand the lens from which we see the world and how that defines or limits our power and what we believe is possible.

A Time of Revealing

Over the past decade, we have seen the underpinnings of our deceptive financial systems leading to outrageous wealth extraction and income disparity. We have seen the biases and racism of our political and judiciary systems, and now we are shedding light on sexual harassment and predatory behavior.  All of these are forms of abuses of power and all of these are symptoms of a system that benefits a few at the cost of the many.

In our most recent revealing, we have been bringing to light feelings of shame, self-betrayal, and feelings of powerlessness. But in our attempt to bring these wrongs to the forefront of our consciousness, we are substituting shame for shaming. We are bringing light to our own internal feelings of shame and replacing that with public shaming as a means of social control. Does that bring us toward the world that we want to see? We have talked about predatory behavior as really being about power over another. In this call out culture, are we not using the power of social media to destroy lives? We are at a point where a single allegation can bring down the life of another human with no conversation of due process, or opportunity for redemption. This can’t be our end game.

I’ve seen groups of people trying to silence other groups because how could they know the challenges and lives of someone else, someone different from them. The answer is we don’t, but if we tell anyone they shouldn’t be heard, then we diminish all voices. It further perpetuates the atmosphere of separation, polarization, and resentment. People should be able to engage from where ever they are and from their own experience; this is speaking their truth. And we need to listen, but when our truth also involves the silencing of another’s voice, then we are just doing to someone else what we have had done to us. That is matching the same level of consciousness that created the world we are in. So if we want to create something different, we have to approach it from a new place, from a new lens of our own conscious creation. Matching fear with fear, anger with anger or shame with shame will result in more of the same.  If we want to create a climate where all people are valued, welcomed and heard then we can’t squash one voice for the sake of another.

Tales of Power

Patriarchy isn’t just about men. It is a system. A system we all take part in. In order to dismantle this system, we don’t go after men; we unplug from the story that created it. We see the lens from which we have been viewing the world and opt to take another viewpoint. We are seeing people unplug from this story all over the place. What we are saying right now is that we will not plug our spirit and our wellbeing into a story that keeps us small. At the same time, we need to be mindful of what we are unconsciously creating and of the destruction that we are leaving in our wake. Otherwise what we are creating is no better. That is the reformation of a system, a Band-aid approach, that doesn’t let wounds heal, it only creates more. We want to birth a new system and this requires a new story. It is time to take our power back as individuals, not so we can have power over another but so we can witness our own power.

There are some very real things to be offended by, but being offended is a choice that we must consider carefully. Because when we do, we also accept the role of the victim. I know that some people are still in their anger. Anger, grief, and condemnation are all part of the healing process but so is forgiveness and compassion.  Anger is a powerful entry point into action and has the ability to destroy what no longer serves us. But without moving through it into forgiveness and compassion, anger’s destructive force can take over and leave more wounds.

“Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope”. ~ Bell Hooks

 

Our world faces many difficult challenges, geopolitically and ecologically. We need to be able to come together more than ever. For myself, the endgame in this time of revealing is creating a world of honor, harmony and mutual respect for all living beings. What is yours and are your actions in alignment with it? Otherwise, we stay in the cycle of us versus them, or the victim and the perpetrator. What if we don’t move from a place of powerlessness, not at the level of the collective, but as an individual? What if we are powerful beyond measure and that is the lens we now see the world? Or if that is a hard place to see, can you use compassion and forgiveness and witness the wounds in another? Can you aid another in their healing, so there is room for redemption?

At some point, we have to have a conversation about how we begin to heal. How we learn to forgive those who have hurt us. Moving from a place of radical love for ourselves and for our fellow humans. A place where we can receive information that challenges us, triggers us even,  without going directly to a place of bad or good, or us versus them. Where we don’t feel the need to control the world through the lens of our wounds. Where we can hold space for forgiveness and provide the opportunity for people to continue to grow and develop and deeply heal. Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.” How does your lens limit your power, your potential and what is truly possible? Are you ready to create a new story?

(c) Can Stock Photo / Jozef

Science and Spirituality: Parallel Paths to Truth

Science and Spirituality: Parallel Paths to Truth

Science and spirituality are sometimes tricky to reconcile. The core of the issue is asking ourselves – what is truth? This is an important question, but an even more interesting question is how do we decide truth? Some people think of truth as objective, and measurable. In our Western culture, we hold scientific inquiry as the ultimate mechanism by which we gain this knowledge. But in our daily actions, it is often our emotions, memories and past experiences that drive our behavior. And beyond that, aren’t there ways of conceptually understanding the world through story, that is just as meaningful?  If truth can only be known through what is replicated and reproduce through the scientific method or based on what the five senses can tell us, aren’t we dismissing the core of our spiritual/emotional nature?

Some think these two paths to truth are in direct contrast to another and many of us are desperate to find a way for them to fit neatly together. Let’s consider for a moment that we do both, science and spirituality a disservice when we want them to converge. Perhaps, they are parallels paths and they both provide us with truth. Each one giving us a different offering and a way to understand the universe and each equally important to our navigating our lives with meaning. They are the masculine and feminine aspects of our nature, and just like the yin/yang, they were meant to complement and not converge.

What Spirituality Tells Us?

Spirituality is our connection to what is meaningful in our lives. And an understanding that this meaning is connected to something that is larger than the individual. For some, this is God and others could describe it as oneness. But, regardless of the language, it is about our relationship to ourselves, our communities and our universe. Through the use of story, meditation, and direct mystical experiences, people deepen their awareness of a shared universal consciousness. These truths are not easily quantified or explained as a string of data, but they help us to understand who we are to one another and more importantly who we are to ourselves.

What Science Tells Us?

Science, on the other hand, is riddled with doubt and skepticism by its very nature. It aims to be faithless and only infer knowledge from observation and experimentation of the physical and the natural world. It tells us how our world operates within the confines of time and space and gives an accurate way to measure and predict the universe’s behavior. Our scientific knowledge has given us huge advances in technology, extended our lives and allowed us to build the infrastructure of our modern world. If science tells us of ‘the how’ or gives us the mechanism by which things work; spirituality sheds light on ‘the why’ or the purpose for our being here. 

The Limitations

Each path to truth has its limitations and it is important to understand them. Science does a great job explaining to us the actions of a single ingredient or the statistical truths of large populations, but it can’t tell your story. And more than that, it doesn’t know the story you tell yourself.  There are many aspects of the mind/body relationship, our subconscious mind, and our relationship dynamics that can’t be measured and accounted for. All of these factors contribute to our unique biochemical make-up. In a very real sense, our stories shape our biology. 

Seeing the world through a spiritual lens only, also has its limitations. It can find itself entrenched in dogma and rigidity in the case of organized religion. It can also fail to explain why something manifests the way it does on the material plane. It has been used as a way to control others as well as an opportunity for some to give away their power and/or responsibility. We can miss out on actionable steps that greatly improve our physical lives if we are too focused on waiting for a sign.

Analytical & Conceptual

For example, let’s take the creation story. There has been a huge debate about it being addressed alongside the evolution in science class. Opponents consider it anti-science and many Christians believe it should be a critical part of our education. So while the creation story does not belong in a science classroom, it still has value to our human experience. In the Native American culture or African folk traditions, they both used mythology or metaphor to describe their world. They have passed on their origins, their philosophies, and the wisdom of their ancestors through the use of storytelling. Maybe these hold just as much value and importance as knowing the chemical constituents of the Big Bang. 

Neither view can fully encompass humanity’s truth, but if we stop moving from a place of either /or and move into the space of both/and, the world does not have to be reduced down to the sum of its parts. Can we live in a world that can appreciate and see the value that science has to offer, but understand that story and myth speak to a part of us that can’t be reached by data alone?  Let’s let them co-exist and not be so eager to abolish or combine them.  Data is great, but we won’t change the world without a new story. Conversely, a new story can only be implemented with the technology and innovations that science provides. 

What are your thoughts? Are you hoping for the day where science & spirituality merge? Listen to archived episodes of On Health & Healing and Entanglement Radio for interviews & information on this subject.


(c) Can Stock Photo / Creative_Hearts

What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Female Empowerment

What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Female Empowerment

In today’s episode, Angela Levesque explores what Hollywood gets wrong about women’s empowerment on the Divine Spectacle. Followed by an explanation of what personal power looks like and how we attain it on the Sacred Mind. Finally, on this week’s It’s Worth Your Time, we look at a book that gets female empowerment right as a blend of the soft and the strong.

In Today’s Episode:

    • In the Divine Spectacle: We look at why the old narrative of the woman rising to overcome her oppressor is something that no longer inspires many women.
      • We look at why turning male characters into a female role is problematic
      • The varying ideas of strength as a female and masculine trait
    • In the Sacred Mind: We look at personal power, what it is and how it is attained or freed.
      • Three things to free personal power
      • How attachments and agreements leak power
    • It’s Worth Your Time:
The Masculine & Feminine Principles in Action

The Masculine & Feminine Principles in Action

The masculine and feminine principles underpin our reality. How do we use the concepts of these principles as a framework to understand our politics, our relationships, and our worldview?

What’s in this podcast?

  • The attributes of the feminine/masculine energies
  • Example of imbalances in our poltical landscape
  • How the understanding of these energies helps us to transcend our current divisiveness
  • Why chaos is necessary to transform rather than reform our systems

Want to learn more about the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine Energies? Read Seeing Beyond The Lens of Patriarchy