Human consciousness is evolving.  This is not my opinion.  Do the research.  It is an empirical fact.  Transpersonal psychologists and others have mapped it.  There are many ways to represent this map, however, essentially, humans have undergone 5 general stage shifts in their developmental journey forward.  Watch this 22 min video by Ken Wilber describing these stages and the critical importance of the next stage, the 6th stage, emerging now………

If you step back and take a look at “it” and by “it” I mean everything, and you start breaking it down and what I mean by breaking it down is to see the parts and how they interact, you can’t but help feel a sense of awe.  Most of everything that is going on we can’t see, touch, hear, feel, taste or smell; we can’t sense it.  We aren’t  conscious of these things.  Are you aware of the neural firings in the brain or the release of peptides and the docking of proteins on individual cells?  How often do you think of earth as one planet among trillions of other planets in the universe?    What about Black Holes and superstring theory?  We don’t “sense” these things.

What is “The Big Picture?”  The Big Picture is a description, representation, perspective of everything.  Now, I am not aware of everything.  And neither are you.  However, there is a way to inquire into it. Religion has tried to corner the market on The Big Picture. Each religion has its own Creation “story” and destination and rules of the game.    Science has progressed rapidly in describing what it sees. Science can only describe.  By its nature it is unable to explain.

So, where do we start?  In studying mystical teachings and practices like yoga we discover that there are essentially two fundamental components that make up the whole.  They are emptiness and form. As most of you know by now I like to provide multiple perspectives. Other ways to understand these two components are:

The Creator and The Created;  Ground of Being and The Physical World; Yang and Yin; Male and Female;  Light and Dark;  The Light and The Vessel…….

The problem we have is that we seem to be unable to focus on both of these components at the same time.  Everything arises in duality in our universe.  You ever think about that?  Anything that arises must do so with its polar opposite or it can not exist.  We can’t have a sense of sweet without knowing bitter.  If something is right then something is wrong.  A governing principle in Chinese Medicine is “As above so below.”  This principle is so profound and very valuable in our search for the Big Picture.  It provides us with the starting point.

There are many paths of inquiry from here.

There are a whole bunch of different perspectives out there, in this world, as to “What’s it all about (“Alfie” for those of you over the age of 40) and “Why am I here?” and ………..some of the other big questions of life like “Who am I?” or, for that matter, “What am I.”

The purpose of this post is not to provide an answer.  The purpose of this post is to begin to structure an argument that there is no more important inquiry to make right now than to pursue these questions.

There are several “categories” of people.  See which one you fall in…

• Those of you who have never asked these questions.  They just have never occurred to you.  You are engaged in what is in front of you and these questions have not entered your field of awareness, and if they have, they were quickly processed as being not that important and no further inquiry was required.
• Those of you who have considered these questions and have come to the logical and rational decision that they are unknowable and therefore, they are a waste of time to consider and better left for philosophers to wax their brains on for that is what philosophers do.
• Those of you who have considered these questions and have come to the conclusion that we came about as a result of a random mixture of materials that, originally and magically, created an amoeba which then evolved into a more complex organism that turned into a reptile that evolved into, perhaps, some huge flying bird that eventually became a monkey and then, like some seedling flying off into some other magical soil, turned into a human being who seems to have “evolved” faster than any of the other animals.  And, yes, our essence is animalistic.  We are just like the animals. There is no Creator or God..  There just is what you see in front of you and when it ends it ends.  And you are good with that.  A matter of fact, you are beyond good, you feel a sense of rising above it all by having this understanding.  You are able to see the nonsense of taking any other position on this matter.
• Those of you that have faith in a particular religion. Those from the first 3 views listed don’t really understand the wide spectrum of perspective you hold.  The common conclusion you seem to have is that our universe started with a Creator.   You also are indoctrinated with some kind of moral code.  You may accept it or not, most of you don’t adhere to it.  You believe in some man made map that provides a story of where you came from and where you are to go.  This map provides instructions on how to navigate your experience as a human being.   Faith is required to be in this category and this is where you all differ.
• There are those of you who consider yourself spiritual but not religious.  Those in the religious category think you are weak in your faith.  Those in the first three categories tolerate you a little more than the religious type.  Nevertheless, you are seen by those not in your category as a bit ungrounded and flakey.  You tend to hang out with people like you and you have been seen congregating in yoga studios all across the country.  In fact, some of these yoga studios are beginning to resemble churches and mystical schools.  You are fairly open minded except you tend to be as intolerant of the religious type as the Atheist.  You think religion is the cause of a lot of the evil in the world and you, like the rational evolutionist, feel a bit above it all.  Some of you think you are enlightened beings and want to be spiritual leaders.

I am sure you can think of other categories to describe the current spectrum of human conscious view on this matter.  If you are so sensitive that the word category is disturbing you then hang in there.  I assure you I am not doing it to hurt, label, pigeon hole.  The reality is that we are all at different “places” determined by desire and ability to hold wider and wider perspective.

Now, to the primary purpose of this post.  I am here to tell you that it is critical that you take some time and inquire into the way things really are.  Not because it is a nice thing to do or because it will increase your performance levels or to convert you to being a God fearing person.

Human consciousness has been evolving since the beginning of time. This is not my opinion, this is an empirical fact.   It has been speeding up in the past few hundred years and in the last 50 years it seems to have found a new gear and is exponentially expanding.   Consciousness is Consciousness.  It is kind of like Consciousness is everything and anything that ever was, ever is and ever will be.  Human consciousness is our ability to connect to, channel, process and make use of Consciousness.  Check out Ray Kurzweil:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/

We, humans, are fast approaching a tipping point.  We need to catch up, consciously, with the advancements that we are realizing in technology.  The bad news is that we are lagging behind.  The good news is that it does not take much effort to break through and have a realization of what is next in your desire and ability to connect to all that there is.

I am not sure what is going to happen if we don’t catch up.  Some see the end of times.  I guess some would question my conclusion that we have not caught up.

Check out some of my linked sites on this website for path ways into inquiry.

Part 2 currently under construction.  I am writing a total of 5 in this series.