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The Transformational Perspective: An Emerging Worldview - Page 8
The Transformational Perspective: An Emerging Worldview - Page 8
| The Transformational Perspective: An Emerging Worldview - Page 8 |
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Page 8 of 8
The Global ConsequenceIn summation, the perception of the primacy of consciousness is embedded within a larger complex of beliefs and values being held by an ever-growing sector of the general public in the West. In the United States for example, their numbers currently match and will shortly surpass those of the fundamentalists. It is also significant that this heightened awareness within our citizenry is emerging in a time in which humanity’s problems appear to be reaching critical mass—a time in which our leadership seems to be failing us at all levels, political, corporate, military, and even religious. Whether the solutions to our issues can be achieved by our current political leadership or by the increasingly questionable machinations of our military-industrial complex is in doubt. In response, increasing numbers of concerned citizens are coming to consider the possibility that our problems may not have political, military, or economic solutions, but rather that they may actually be spiritual in nature, in alignment with the beliefs and values outlined above—a conviction that may, in turn, enhance the growth of the new spiritual complex. In addition, if our children are acquiring these altruistic, spiritually based values and beliefs within the fabric of their families, they are already spreading rapidly throughout the larger society, accelerating the shift. Although the current spiritual reawakening is most visible in North America and Western Europe, the invasive influence of Western Culture upon the rest of the world suggests that it may, in fact, extend deeply into the international community. In Paul Ray's words "we should take heart, for we are traveling in the company of an enormous number of allies." His Holiness the Dalai Lama has put it this way: Nowadays, whatever happens in one part of the world will eventually affect, through a chain reaction, people and places far away. Therefore, it is essential to treat each major problem (and social movement), right from (their) inception, as a global concern. It is no longer possible to emphasize, without destructive repercussions, the national, racial, or ideological barriers that differentiate us. Within the context of our new interdependence, self-interest clearly lies in considering the interest of others.(8) This insight confirms that the transformational community taking form in the West is of enormous import, for the emergence of the new spiritual complex within it, as well as the awareness that the complex is engendering on an increasingly societal scale, has the power to alter the directions of history in much the same way that the emergence of Christianity utterly changed the Roman world, as well as the Western mind, almost two thousand years ago. While the time frame for this shift may vary with the ebb and flow of current events, there are no maybes here. The proverbial handwriting is on the wall. The history of the world's peoples will be profoundly and inescapably changed by the spiritual awakening going on in the West. The results will be felt at every level of society, in every country, and will, by association, determine much of the politics and individual lifeways of the Twenty-first Century and beyond. ________________ Notes 1. These anomalous experiences are fully documented in my autobiographical trilogy Spiritwalker: Messages from the Future (New York: Bantam Books, 1995), Medicinemaker: Mystic Encounters on the Shaman's Path (New York: Bantam Books, 1998), and Visionseeker: Shared Wisdom from the Place of Refuge (Carlsbad, California: Hay House, 2001.) 2. See Sankara Saranam’s God Without Religion: Questioning Centuries of Accepted Truths, (East Ellijay, Georgia: The Pranayama Institute, 2005.) 3. Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (New York: Harmony Books, 2000.) Ray now estimates that the number of people involved exceeds 60 million in the United States alone. 4. Paul Ray, personal communication, March 2002. 5. Richard Sellin, The Spiritual Gyre: Recurring Phases of Western History (Fort Bragg, California: Lost Coast Press, 1997.) 6. Robert S. De Ropp, The Master Game: Pathways to Higher Consciousness Beyond the Drug Experience (New York: Delta Press, 1968). See also Hank Wesselman, Visionseeker, chapter 1, and Roger Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism (Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher Press, 1990), chapter 3. 7. See Joan B. Townsend, Neoshamanism and the Modern Mystical Movement, in Gary Doore, ed., Shaman's Path: Healing, Personal Growth and Empowerment (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1988), pp. 73-85. 8. The Dalai Lama, The Global Community and Universal Responsibility, in Eddie and Debbie Shapiro, eds., The Way Ahead: A Visionary Perspective for the New Millennium (Rockport, Maine: Element Books, 1992.) ________________ Hank Wesselman, PhD. Former university and college professor, zoologist and paleoanthropologist involved in expeditionary field research in search of human origins in eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley. In addition to his scientific publications, he is the author of Spiritwalker (Bantam, 1995), Medicinemaker (Bantam, 1998) and Visionseeker (Hay House, 2001), an autobiographical trilogy focused upon spontaneous anomalous experiences that took him deep into the shamanic worlds of magic and meaning. His most recent books include The Journey to the Sacred Garden (Hay House, 2003) and Spirit Medicine (Hay House, 2004, with Jill Kuykendall.) This version of Hank Wesselman's essay is reprinted from Mind Before Matter, eds Trish Pfeiffer, John Mack and Paul Devereuax with the author's permission." To visit his website: sharedwisdom.com Check out Hank's new CD set!
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