As we enter the 3rd Millennium there is a growing new meme that has been picking up speed over the past 40 years, since the 1960's, and it is a meme that supports the growing spiritual awakening of humanity.
Up until the 1960's we were living in a world where the dominant meme was that more of everything material, in the external world, was better. Through television and media the message was reinforced over and over that more money, more material goods, more luxury, more cars, more clothes, more boats, more real estate and more gadgets were what made life meaningful.
But the post-modern world that was gaining strength back in the 1960's and 70's began to introduce a whole new perspective of what is valuable. At that time there was a strong minority of people who started turning away from that meme of un-ending consumption and introduced a "back-to-the-land" influence into the culture. It was during the 1960's that we saw people waking up to a more global consciousness and it was in that decade that the civil rights movement was birthed, Amnesty international, and the Peace Corps were all created, just to name a few consciousness-raising organizations. Then continuing into the 1970's we saw the birth of Earth Day, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and a growing consciousness of concern for the environment and for people's rights all over the world. This started a movement in the social conscience away from materialism and toward the environment, and a broader, more holistic view of our world. And in spite of the media's continued insistence on perpetuating the old memes, memes of consumption, materialism and accumulation, over the past 50 years there have been significant changes that we are finally beginning to see trickle into the dominant culture, changes that support the good of future generations.
One of these changes is a new meme among many people on the planet currently that is aimed more at spiritual wealth than material wealth. Millions of people now are taking a whole variety of spiritually nourishing classes on-line, through tele-seminars, webinars and higher education institutions. There is an increasing thirst to explore our inner world, our emotions, our beliefs and the meaning of our lives through practices such as meditation, counseling, therapy, classes, conscious travel, and quality time in nature and the wilderness. Through evolutionary eyes, one could say that more and more people are choosing to evolve beyond the deeply seated concerns of the reptilian brain and the first three chakras, toward the collective concerns of the community and the upper four chakras.
This new meme of valuing spiritual wealth over material wealth is crucial in order for us to move through the challenges that we are both facing and creating on the planet currently. The environmental crises are the most obvious challenges we are facing, and these crises are the result of the high consumer economy and material appetite of the first world, in addition to the increasing world population and the accompanying increase of resources that will be needed to sustain that population. But the other challenges we are facing on a global scale, including economic, social, political and religious conflicts will all call for a new level of consciousness, a new perspective, a new set of values in order to find the solutions that take into consideration the next seven generations. And Conscious Evolution is all about taking into consideration the next seven generations and beyond! It is not about us staying stuck in the self-oriented narcissism of our current social ethos. It is about waking up to new innovations that are grounded in environmental stewardship, social and economic justice, and spiritual fulfillment for all people on the planet.
And so it will take spiritually open people to bring tolerance and non-violence into a world of chaos. It will take spiritually literate people to create new documents and forms of government that foster social and economic justice across the spectrum of humanity. It will take spiritually concerned people to love and care for the environment enough to pay for new sources of energy and new technologies that provide healthy, whole, organic food to the masses. And it will take spiritually rich people who have the power of Love, as Jesus and many others did, to manifest the miracles needed for the healing, renewal and transformation of humanity to it's next level of development. I propose that it will be the spiritual heroes who will take humanity to it's next phase of evolution. The next revolution is the spiritual evolution of humanity, and it has already begun!
Enter Universal Humanity....
Written by Sharon Gonzalez-Alei
P.S.
There is a cartoon drawing where there is a flight of stairs going up and on each of the lower stairs is an ape that increases in height and intelligence with each next step. Then about the 6th step is a man, dressed in a suit. The next cartoon, the man is looking down at the apes, then he is looking up at the next several steps above him which are empty. The next slide is him with a very shocked look on his face, having realized that it doesn't stop with him. The ape on the step below him says, "I was wondering when you'd notice there are more steps ahead of YOU". (Unfortunately I couldn't find this cartoon again when I went looking for it.)