WE ARE NOT ALONE — “Crossing the threshold of Awe”

What kind of humans do we need to be in order to create ‘the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible’? What would it take to create harmony on earth and in the Universe?

For me the answer is always the same… Awe.

“There was suddenly a very deep gut feeling that something was different — there was a purposefulness of flow, of energy, of time, of space in the cosmos — that it was beyond man’s rational ability to understand, but suddenly there was a non rational way of understanding that had been beyond my previous experience.”

– Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo Astronaut, upon viewing the Earth from the first time from space

What do you feel when you witness a moment of utter beauty? A magnificent sunset, a flower blossoming or a butterfly emerging from its cocoon?

I access my connection to what I perceive as the unifying force of Universal intelligence through my sense of awe. It’s this indescribable feeling that comes when I’m truly present with life and experiencing moments of love, kindness and the miraculous in nature. These moments can be so powerful that they have the ability to transform us and open doorways to new ways of viewing ourselves and our world beyond our culture, race, history, and conditioning. In essence, what awe affords us is an opportunity to pause, connect, and let in more of the magnificence which exists all around us and let it inform us.

Humanity over time has gone through numerous transitions. Moving from purely indigenous tribal societies through the Industrial Revolution to today which has brought many benefits to humanity in terms of its development through technological advancement and yet has also taken its toll. Our society has become progressively technology centric in unbalanced ways as well and increasing numbers of people claim they feel more alone and isolated than ever before. One of the major themes emerging from this pandemic has been the amplification of this isolation, yet at the same time there is also evidence of a shared profound feeling that this has somehow catalyzed a massive global wake up call. Many people are soul searching and asking the question, ‘what comes next?’ or perhaps the even better question: ‘who will we choose to be next?’

Will we continue to try to grasp on to old systems out of fear and familiarity or will we bravely and faithfully lean in to the threshold of the unknown? To that place that’s simultaneously boundless and intense? Boundless because something new will have to take the place of our currently crumbling systems and intense for it means the confronting of the shadow and a necessary look at all that is no longer working and dying away. We are being forced to come to terms with our willingness to let it all go and put our trust in the human and creator spirit to innovate and reinvent ourselves.

Punctuated Equilibrium is a term in biology describing a phenomenon where a species experiences enough environmental pressures that a quantum leap in its evolution is catalyzed and in the process, it transforms into a new species that has never been seen before. What if what was available to us right now is just this? A perfect storm; the right amount of intensity that is pushing us to our growth edge and beyond what humanity has ever thought possible? Moreover, what if in the midst of our feelings of aloneness and isolation we actually discover that we are far from being alone in this?

There is a popular quote by Einstein, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” In order to reach a new level, beyond the veils of limited perception and limited beliefs, we have to live in and traverse the liminal space. We have to cross the threshold of awe. This is that still, yet expansive space between dimensions of thought, being and understanding, where the source of our greatest genius, creativity and imagination lives. The place our greatest scientists, artists and thinkers have pulled from to provide us with, yes, those moments of awe that help us reach beyond what we thought was possible and open the doors to a new world.

Science has in recent years continued to conclude what the ancient sages and indigenous peoples already knew in their own way. We are undeniably interconnected with all things and there is a greater intelligence operating in the Universe. Somewhere along the way though, many of us stopped trusting this innate intelligence of life itself. To understand this Truth on a deeper level, ask yourself the following: Do you have to think in order to make your heart beat? Do you have to be hyper aware to take each breath and move blood through your veins? What is this force of life that seems to be perpetuating everything in our world and what is our relationship to it?

“Rest as the awareness that is aware without using thought — After all, all weather comes and goes, and no storm ever hurt the sky.”

-Loch Kelly

In science, when we study the micro and macro of our world, we find that mind — or what we perceive to be our intelligence — is not just a physical phenomenon but that it expands beyond our own limited ideas of our biology. There is an intricate order that pervades all things — from the shape of a snowflake to that of the galaxies.

Everywhere we find intelligent systems at work. One such place is in the gut brain of our microbiome. We have living inside us, just as many microbial cells in our body as we have human cells and in some cases even more. You read that right, we have a literal universe of beings living inside our gut, always there accompanying us as an essential part of our body.

Then there is the fantastic fungi as Louie Schwartzberg and Paul Stamets share in their incredible documentary film. These great connectors and transformers of life create a complex underground mycelial network right under our feet in millions of webbed pathways that extend for thousands of miles and send information from tree to tree and plant to plant in family clusters of connections. Fungi networks function much like the internet yet are a biological technology or intelligent living system that has been identified to be the largest and oldest terrestrial organism on the planet. Humanity would not have achieved the complex civilized systems we live in without the influence of fungi on our beings. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t stop there. Our own human minds also have unique connections to each other that go beyond the physical structures of our own individual brains.

The Princeton Global Consciousness Project, a partner of The Harmonic Convergence 2020, found through an ongoing random number generator experiment that the collective thought patterns of humanity have measurable impact and that there are subtle energetic interactions that link us with each other and the Earth. What was most profound was how they discovered that coherent consciousness, specifically, creates order in our world. This means that our thoughts and feelings are like notes in a grander symphony and as such we create dissonance in our environment when we are out of balance internally. That dissonance translates to a strained relationship with each other and with the planet and visa versa. In contrast, when we are in resonance with ourselves and our environment, we create a unique synchronous order and a harmony where those intelligent patterns begin to emerge… Not because we forced it or willed it, but ironically, because we allowed it by opening up enough for it to fully express through us in a grand alignment with our true nature and natural rhythms. Studies at Heart Math have also shown that there are incredible benefits to intentionally creating coherence using our hearts. It turns out that heart coherence extends to a measurable field around our body and out considerable distances into the world.

Imagine the feeling of when your heart starts to beat in sync with your breath and then in sync with the heartbeat and breath of a loved one. Contemplate if that feeling could extend and expand to all our hearts, syncing up at the same time, breathing together. Now imagine if that same feeling extended our collective capacity and enabled us to sync up with the energetic movements of the Earth itself — Gaia’s heart beat. Finally, think and feel yourself extending that out to the sun and moon and all the planets in our solar system — to all the stars in our galaxy and beyond. Is there really a limit to how connected and coherent we could feel? Is the only limit then within our own imaginations?

In a survey of 24 countries, published the day of the release of ‘The Last Jedi Star Wars’ Movie, the majority of people surveyed said they believe we are not alone in the Universe. Scientists and astronomers believe in the potential existence of many more Earth-like planets in the universe with other forms of life — and, as Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology states, ‘it is very likely that every single star in our Milky Way galaxy has at least one such planet’’ and that sometime in the near future, people will be able to point to a star and say, ‘that star has a planet like Earth.’ There are one billion trillion stars in the observable Universe. That’s about the same number of grains of sand on ALL the beaches of planet Earth.
The statistical analysis of the cosmos is overwhelmingly in favor of there being intelligent life in other parts of our Universe. According to new calculations — there are likely between 4 and 211 civilizations in the Milky Way today capable of communicating with others.

We say that we have yet to discover interstellar sentient life, but perhaps re-discover would be more accurate since there is also clear evidence within images in petroglyphs, structures and temples throughout the ancient and indigenous cultures depicting human contact with beings from other worlds, known to them as “star family”.

What if our journey of shifting our perception of ourselves back into one of wholeness is also one of re-membering, as opposed to dis-membering? Re-membering to a wholeness that recognizes that at every level of scale, we are not alone, and that we have actually never been alone? Remembering then becomes a reunion of different parts of us we had forgotten that were connected. There is a vast richness to all the ways that life can express itself, from the tiniest particle to the largest supernova, and that within it all there remains a unified energy, a Universal intelligence.

“A Spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe”
– Albert Einstein

Once we claim our awake and aware nature as part of the greater fabric of life, we have even greater choice in how we live our lives and co-create with the Universe. Our responsible choices, especially in this great time of transition, matter immensely.

““Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

– Chief Seattle, Leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Native American Tribes

There is a saying in the Lakota language, Aho Mitakuye Oyasin, used in respectful greeting in every rite and ceremony, it means ‘we are all related’. It is a prayer of oneness and harmony with all forms of life. ALL forms. It recognizes our sacred responsibility of stewardship of the land, the animals, the plants, the planet and each other. To come from this heart space of knowing the embodied truth of interconnection, they say, is an experience of awe and attunement with all the elements and forces of nature… The attunement needed to stay in harmony and be responsible stewards of the sacred gift of life itself.

It is at this unique choice point humanity faces that life seems to be asking us if we are ready to become who we must become in order to cross this threshold and breakthrough to the other side.

“This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you.”
– White Eagle Woman, Hopi indigenous Elder.

It makes sense that so many ancient prophecies spoke of this time as an end of times…

Could this be humanity’s metaphorical death and rebirth process? The shedding in the cocoon of all its shadow and ideas of disconnection, in order to fully awaken the imaginal cells that co-create the butterfly that will come out on the other side? If so, what would that butterfly look like?

Could accessing more of our true nature bring us to a way of being that resides in global unity and enjoys a coherent telepathic connection to a collective human consciousness and even beyond, to a Universal web of consciousness?

The Harmonic Convergence 2020 is an opportunity for humanity to experience, for the first time, a global collective experience of awe, akin to what is known as the ‘the overview effect’ by astronauts when they experience seeing the earth for the first time from space.

“On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.

“And what I felt was an extraordinary personal connectedness with it. I experienced what has been described as an ecstasy of unity. I not only saw the connectedness, I felt it and experienced it sentiently. I was overwhelmed with the sensation of physically and mentally extending out into the cosmos.”
– Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo Astronaut /Founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences

This feeling of ‘ubiquitous harmony’ and interconnectedness with the greater whole of the Universe is a sense of belonging. Belonging to each other and to all of life. Whether we are the smallest particle or the largest star, whether we are living next door to one another, or oceans and light years and dimensions apart, we are all uniquely connected by this intelligent and awake life force within us and we are never alone.

A dear friend and colleague shared a teaching with me recently from a spiritual mentor of his, Bharat Mitra. Bharat said, ‘Only actions that arise from presence, from beingness, from the heart, from consciousness — those are the actions that have the Universal intelligence, the wisdom, and the light to be transformative”.

May we enter this threshold of the unknown together from that place of beingness, presence and meditation; with open minds and open hearts. May we trust enough to lean into the slipstream of this moment and be moved by awe to know without a doubt, our true nature.

“Space, the mirror, waits for life to come find itself there.”
– Ray Bradbury

We began this journey with an inquiry into what kind of humans we need to be to create ‘the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible’. And I keep thinking now of one of the speakers at The Harmonic Convergence 2020, scientist, Nassim Haramein, in his film [The Connected Universe] where he says, ‘all it takes is shifting our perspective to see things a little differently.’

Let us take this opportunity to shift together, because we are all in this together, on this planet and throughout the Universe. We are not alone.