Bringing Soul Awareness to the Coming Changes

 

A new and testing journey for humanity begins...

As it grasps the enormity of the climate emergency and the scale of our damaging impact upon Earth's life-support system, will humanity rise to the immense challenges that are now facing us?

To prevent runaway global heating, we will need to dismantle an entire global economy premised on growth that has reached the limits of our planet's finite resources; we will need to set aside the assumptions, values, narratives and technologies associated with that way of life; and we will need to take the opportunity offered by the climate and ecological crisis to free ourselves from the old behaviours that caused it.

The time for us to act decisively is now, for the sand is running perilously low in the hour glass that represents our very brief window for effective action.

But whatever we do - or fail to do - at this critical time, there is no doubt that our species is soon to set out on a new journey of discovery. As the structures of our global society start to weaken, as its edifices begin to erode, and we grasp the sad fact that humanity has bequeathed a toxic legacy to our beautiful planetary home, the fear and grief we experience can also provide the cathartic stimulus to liberate ourselves from our old way of being, to enter the soul-consciousness that always exists within us, and start to find a new way of being in the world. 

Humanity has made the fatal error of over-identifying the Self with the body, with the ephemeral ego or outer personality and with the transient contents of the mind.  By subordinating our true Self to the physical being, we came to see mind and consciousness as confined and created by the physical body and brain.  Yet as souls, drawing on transcendent qualities of love, wisdom and compassion, humanity can find the strength to end its damaging attachment to the old materialistic and now techno-industrial paradigm and extend its self identification beyond the body - not out of duty or morality but out of the experience of inner illumination - and so rediscover, not just its deeper spiritual identity and higher consciousness, but also its blissful unity with all life.

The work of soul-recovery can heal us from the imbalances that have led to this crisis.

To understand and flow with the planetary changes that are now unfolding, we will need true spiritual guidance. Even with environmental collapse and its grim consequences looming over us, and despite our obstinate resistance to new knowledge and change, something extraordinary happens when the heart opens to the soul. With restored soul-awareness, we remember to reverence Nature or Divine Mother once again as the blessed sustaining ground of our being, and we remember too that the Divine, or Great Spirit, is the supreme source of all love and delight.  Joy-filled relationships flourish when a natural environment is restored, when animals are safe once again in the wild, and when life, plants, animals and human beings are set free from the machinery of global exploitation.

May humanity now move through system collapse towards a new paradigm of sustainability.

May we embrace a new world view and new ways of both seeing and being, guided by each self's remembrance that it is intimately connected with both Nature and Spirit.  May the ego be set aside, the mind quietened and the soul nature awakened, so humanity becomes able to negotiate its way through the coming changes.

 

Basic Meditation Practice

Sakshi, the Witnessing-Self is the real observer; it is always the observer, and, being self-luminous, can never be the object of observation.

Dá¹›g-Dá¹›syha-Viveka, Vedanta text attributed to Bharati Tirtha (c. 1350 CE)

Sit quietly and comfortably.  Become aware of the body and input from the senses.  Ask, who is being aware of these perceptions?  Bring attention to the breath moving in and out of the nostrils, lifting and lowering the lungs.  Ask, who is being aware of breathing?  As one becomes aware of sounds, thoughts, feelings, the heartbeat and so on, note that these rise and fall, come and go, like the breath.  As thoughts and feelings arise, observe them and return to the presence of the awareness of the observer.  Ask, who is being aware of observing?

If awareness follows a train of thought, then by bringing attention back to the breath the observer can watch the thought rise, at what point it gives attention to it, identifies it, at what point it withdraws attention from it, and so on.

If you find yourself making a commentary or critique of how well or poorly you are meditating, then observe this thought too and allow it to pass.  The acceptance or rejection of the thought, of the positive or negative emotion or observation, is withdrawn so only the presence of awareness remains. 

Eventually the meditator experiences or may observe with interest the train of passing thoughts but is detached from them.  The body, the mind, the 'I', the observing awareness, are all passing through the abiding spacious presence of the Self.

Once regular meditation practice is established, identification with the play of passing thoughts ceases and the calm, witnessing consciousness of the observer, and the abiding presence of the Divine Being or Self, can be renewed by returning to the breath as the point of focus.