I believe there is a great spiritual awakening happening on Earth.
If you had told me this ten years ago I would have stared at you blankly and thought you were a bit nuts.
How times have changed.
The reasons for this are many, but I think it boils down to two main reasons: 1. People are ready. People can sense there’s something wrong with the way life is being lived on our planet and they are looking for alternatives; and 2. The conditions are just right now for the spread of information and therefore wisdom to occur (the most obvious avenue for this being the internet). There is a third factor of technology that I will discuss, but I see it as secondary to these first two reasons.
There are two sides to spiritual awakening itself though. One side is about waking up to absolute reality, what Jesus called “God”, and what many others have called “enlightenment”, “self-realization”, or “awakening”. And the other side is the progression of life on our planet: our cultural evolution, if you will.
To deal with the first aspect: A lot of people don’t know this, but there’s this crazy little thing called consciousness which makes up literally everything we experience.
Don’t believe me?
Try and find something in your experience that is *not* made of consciousness (i.e. your sight, taste, smell, touch, etc). Pretty difficult isn’t it?
Well that’s because everything we know of the world IS made of consciousness, according to our direct perception of it. Everything, in a very real sense, is just in your head. And this is now being backed up more and more by modern physics, which for over a hundred years has been suggesting to us that things are not really things until they are observed – i.e. until they appear in consciousness. In fact it suggests that things are not even things when they do appear in consciousness. It suggests our whole world is made up of nothing but consciousness. This is what the Buddhist teaching of emptiness points to – empty of substance.
This is an amazing fact, and often overlooked because of its simplicity.
But people are beginning to take notice. Not just of the physics, but of consciousness itself. People are starting to question more than they ever have, “what is the truth of all this?”
You see, as Morpheus said to Neo in the Matrix – one of the best documentary series ever made by the way 😛 – we’ve been living in a dream world. A kind of trance state created by our minds, which says with absolute certainty that things are things whether or not we are looking at them. Physics says “nu-uh”.
And for some inexplicable reason, there is a massive amount of interest gaining in areas which treat consciousness seriously. Ten years ago you could go to a 10 day silent meditation retreat whenever you wanted; now you have to book months in advance to reserve your spot.
The second part of our cultural evolution and awakening is about ideas and questioning our assumptions to come up with better ways of living. This is the natural selection of ideas which Richard Dawkins coined “memes”. You see this everywhere. How many people do you know who are suddenly interested in the gender pronouns debate? 10 years ago this topic was unheard of. Now, debates are happening all over the place. And, even though it may look crazy and dysfunctional on the surface, what people are really trying to do is make sense of things: refine our ideas so we come up with better, more inclusive ideas.
It may look like not much progress is being made on the surface: Just two people stubbornly arguing for their point of view, but really there is much more going on. People are at least considering the other person’s perspective, even if they won’t willingly acknowledge this during the debate. They are starting to see that there could be some truth to both sides of the argument. There’s a quote which says the progress of spiritual maturity is gauged by an appreciation for paradox and ambiguity. I think this is very true. Take the gender pronouns issue as an example. There is no cut and dried answer to this, just as there isn’t to most questions in society. It’s ridiculous to claim to that gender differences are an entirely social construct, just as it’s ridiculous to claim that social constructs don’t play a major role in gender identification. It’s all about, as Richard Dawkins also once said, “consciousness raising”: appreciating that there may be another side to the story which you haven’t fully understood yet. (note: Richard Dawkins is not a favourite intellectual of mine, but for some reason he popped up twice in one article, go figure).
And the third aspect I mentioned – that of technology. Technology is going to drag us into the 21st century whether we like it or not, and it’s also going to radically change our way of life, as if it hasn’t enough already. The warning that comes along with this is that when a culture develops highly advanced technology, it had better be mature enough to be able to handle it! Which is why I think we are seeing more and more mature debates being held all around the world. People are becoming fascinated with thinkers like Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and many others. I noted that, off the top of my head, there are not as many influential female speakers, and this is something that will definitely need to change: we need to listen to the feminine more if we’re going to evolve as a spiritually mature, advanced species. Women may not always speak the same language as men; they may not always give your mind as much of a bone to chew on, but their contribution is just as important, if not more important, given the imbalance that currently exists within our society.
So in general I think people are starting to pause and say, “Hang on, this isn’t working.” “Something’s not right.” “Things aren’t how they’re meant to be.” “I’m unhappy.”
And when people start to realise they’re unhappy – or at least, not as happy as they could be – and usually after a long period of wallowing, they start to look for cures. They begin “the search”. They look everywhere for this thing called happiness, in people, places, ideas, things, but never seem to be able to find it. Or if they do, it’s only temporary. This is when a lot of people start to look at the bigger questions of life, and start to look into spirituality. This is the beginning of the end of their road of unhappiness.
Not that enlightenment is just about curing unhappiness. That’s just a byproduct. Enlightenment is about truth. Truth, it seems, just brings a lot of happiness along with it (eventually).
But this transition won’t be easy. There are a lot of hard truths we’re going to have to face up to as a society to make it through this. A lot of really horrible shit has gone down while we’ve all been sleep-walking our way through life. Enlightenment is sort of like shining a torch in the darkness. When you shine a torch, the first thing you see is all the rats, so you’re horrified. But the next part is the part that’s worth it: the rats hate the light so they begin to flee. So that’s all we’ve got to keep doing; keep shining our torches (mostly on ourselves, because as Adyashanti once said, “enlightenment is an inside job”). I won’t go into the details on what these hard truths will be because a. I don’t know them well enough myself yet; and b. my intention is not to fear-monger here, only to raise awareness, so I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the specifics just yet. Let’s just say, to use a quote from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” In other words, there have been more things going down on Earth than most people have realised.
My prediction is that we’re going to be in for a very rough ride when we finally start to see all the rats that have previously gone unnoticed, but it’s the first step to a life free of these rats. There’s no other way to go about it. You can’t just keep living pretending the rats don’t exist. Well, you can, but it will only continue the suffering we all experience. As the song by The Clash says, “If I go there will be trouble; if I stay there will be double.”
So we all have a choice now. I say go. Even though it’s going to be painful and difficult, the alternative is much much worse.
Which decision will you make?
In love and light,
Will.
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