Adam Blatner

This is only the beginning of a century in which people will begin to expand and deepen their identities manifold. We have become aware of the vastness of the cosmos, the depth of time (not thousands, but billions of years!), the complexity of nature, the depth and complexity and frontiers of mind (and unconscious mental processes), the acceleration of discoveries in science and technology that show no evidence of slowing down, the sheer variety of not just religions, but also of notions of what those religions and philosophies should be about—to the point of it becoming apparent that everyone is a little different!

In the 19th century, people were still moving from small states and tribes into nations. In the 20th century, people were identifying with ethnicity, gender, race, age, nation, and separate religion—this belief versus that. (To identify with is to imagine that one “is” primarily one of these narrower categories.) In the 21st century it is becoming increasingly apparent that:

  – Ecologically we are all one planetary species—reflective consciousness empathizing with all life, recognizing our interdependence.

– Spiritually, we are integrating psychology, recognizing that each individual is unique in what s/he can experience and express about the Greater Wholeness of Being. Religion thus evolves into a process of helping each other find our special way to help, our personal gifts, based on talents, temperament, abilities, interests, background, etc.

– Spiritually and politically, we must build constructively, helping each other, and also weave in some degree of surrender to intuition and synchronicity. While sustaining responsibility, there’s a growing recognition of non-physical forces moving within the cosmos helping us, and our receptivity to this image of help will accelerate the advance. (Images of “God” or higher power will continue to be juggled, re-defined, but what needs to happen is to recognize the individual nature of this psychic projection and stop arguing about which one is right and the others all wrong. We’re past that!)

– Our history ceases to be the history of an ethnicity, a region, a nation, etc. It has expanded to be the history of the evolution of consciousness itself, emerging from successive events that have complexified energy and matter—from the origin of galaxies and planets through life’s evolution to the challenge of consciousness becoming wise enough not to extinguish itself, but rise above our immaturity. The problem of course is that we have technically overreached our emotional maturity, so that it’s a bit as if in a kindergarten the children were sexually mature enough to reproduce irresponsibly, and also they had loaded real guns.

– Our identity ceases to be merely that of those clever enough to master their environments; now it’s time to weave in humility, wisdom, courage, play, flexibility, peacemaking, so that we can seek sustainability and empathy. Selfishness and exploitation, which still carries forth in a more disguised way the sins of colonialism, needs to transform into cooperation and respect. This will require a wholesale revision of the economic and cultural system.

– The metaphor of being children of God is wearing thin—there’s too much dependency and it generates fantasy of passive rescue. Gradually we need to mix in increasing elements in which we become a co-parent, nurturing the world and each other, taking more responsibility. There are limits to this, and it’s not either-or, but it needs to move significantly away from the illusion of relative helplessness.

– The idea that we have reached an age of reckoning as a species, our rite of passage into adulthood, involves this transformation, this taking of responsibility. It needs to be re-united with the capacity to recognize our social inter-dependence. The role of hero, of individual pioneer, of rugged individualist, will continue, but needs to be less idealized. (It has been co-opted by exploitative capitalism.) We begin to know that we have been evolved, mainly unconsciously, to become conscious; now we need to take responsibility for our further evolution as a conscious species. (The idea of conscious evolution as a species and a goal is itself a powerful meme that will help promote this process.)

– There is a growing awareness that levels of awareness differ widely. For those who have awakened to the aforementioned, these ideas are so obvious it feels like being awake: It’s hard to believe that everyone else doesn’t think this way. (Or as teenagers say, “Duh!”) For those who have not yet awakened to these ideas, they seem bewildering, vaguely threatening of what seems to be a more familiar way the world operates, dangerously utopian, and threatening also to whatever types of status or privilege have finally been gained. There’s also a large intermediary group who are beginning to make this transition in their consciousness—it’s a very complex process—and as a result, feel a wide range of personal emotional reactions.

What can I say to comfort you all? Only that I have found it useful to imagine that each of us has a goodly number of angels working hard to bring us forth as individuals and as a collective. I can’t prove this, of course, but it generates an attitude of positive expectation. Perhaps I was “meant” to meet this other person—there is something in the Grand Plan that will benefit, what I can do for that person, what s/he can do for me, what we may do together for all. It promotes a nicer way of being in the world, promotes an attitude of optimistic faith. You don’t have to believe any of this, and you don’t have to believe in anything in particular, but it’s useful, that’s all, it’s useful to act as if you did have a positive expectation and receptivity to the Grace of angels.