Living Transformation: Awakening To Our Oneness

This is the sec­ond part in our series on essen­tial val­ues for liv­ing a trans­formed life. My inten­tion in writ­ing this series is to engage in a con­ver­sa­tion around the promise and the pos­si­bil­ity of the time in which we live, this year of 2012, and whether or not this will be a time of awak­en­ing, when the entire par­a­digm of human­ity shifts and we’re ele­vated to a higher state of consciousness.

A fun­da­men­tal ques­tion we ought to be ask­ing: What is required of us, as indi­vid­u­als and as the human race, if we are to awaken? What are the val­ues and the behav­iors that will best sup­port such an awak­en­ing and a par­a­digm shift for the entire planet?

It’s impor­tant to under­stand the scope of what we’re talk­ing about. Wak­ing up is not just for a few peo­ple — the priv­i­leged ones, the edu­cated ones or the lucky ones. This is about an awak­en­ing for all of human­ity, with no one left behind.

The con­di­tioned mind would argue this is impos­si­ble, it’ll never hap­pen. The con­di­tioned mind points to the whole of human his­tory as evi­dence for why this will not and can­not ever hap­pen. We don’t have to look very far beyond right now to find such evi­dence. We all know this. So obvi­ously, the dis­cus­sion we’re hav­ing is not based on what has always hap­pened in the past and there­fore, how the future is already lim­ited and defined by what has gone before.

This con­ver­sa­tion is about trans­for­ma­tion, about the times in which we live. It is no acci­dent that you and I are here, on the planet, at this appointed hour. It is no acci­dent that we have cre­ated the means to be con­nected in real time, via the Inter­net, so that we are able to see and know what is hap­pen­ing all over the world at the moment it is unfold­ing. Our job now is to open our eyes and see what’s here, see who’s here, see beyond the veil of our con­di­tioned minds that argue for lim­i­ta­tions. If human­ity is mak­ing the great leap together, we must be will­ing par­tic­i­pants in the co-creation process, guided by the vision and pos­si­bil­ity that the time is now to real­ize our full poten­tial as a species.

As a species, we have evolved to arrive at this moment in time, equipped with the tools and aware­ness to fully grasp the sig­nif­i­cance of the oppor­tu­nity that lies before us. We have the capac­ity to rec­og­nize our true nature as more and more of us have already begun to wake up. We are begin­ning to under­stand just who we are and how we are to move for­ward. Mov­ing for­ward, sep­a­rately, yet as one. We are begin­ning to under­stand that we are indi­vid­ual expres­sions of the one cre­ative force, call it what you will. Call it what you believe it to be. Call it God, call it Love, call it Infi­nite Intel­li­gence, call it Life, call it Noth­ing, call it No-Thing. This force doesn’t care what it’s called by us. It is infi­nite, eter­nal and unchanging.

Our job is to rec­og­nize this intel­li­gence and cre­ativ­ity as the very essence of who we are and what we’re made of and learn how to use it for our high­est good. But to learn how to use it only for our indi­vid­ual progress is not enough. We must, as the movie illus­trated, be will­ing to pay it for­ward, and, I would add, back­wards and side­ways. We don’t cross the line until we all cross the line and that’s the dif­fer­ence between how it’s always been and how it will be in an expanded consciousness.

For we will come to know one another as our­selves. We will come to appre­ci­ate the dif­fer­ent cos­tumes we wear, lan­guages we speak, food we eat, pol­i­tics and ide­olo­gies we believe and we will know that behind it all is sim­ply the One that is the All, and that we are one with it. In this aware­ness, we will come to know that there is noth­ing to fear, that our seem­ing dif­fer­ences only serve to make the stew of human­ity richer and more interesting.

Sci­ence tells us that every­thing is energy; that we’re made of the same energy that con­sti­tutes the entire cos­mos, or as Carl Sagan said, “we’re made of star stuff.” To put it in its sim­plest terms, the energy that is what we are is the same as the stars, the rocks and the trees, the ocean and the sky. There’s only one thing going on here, while at the same time it is being expressed in an infi­nite num­ber of indi­vid­u­al­ized ways, appear­ing to be sep­a­rate, wear­ing dif­fer­ent cos­tumes, but fun­da­men­tally the same.

If this is true, and I believe that it is, then we are all con­nected. We see this expres­sion of con­nec­tiv­ity man­i­fested in an infi­nite num­ber of ways.

At age 86, my father was diag­nosed with stom­ach can­cer and given only a few weeks to a few months to live. He had always told us that when his time came, he wanted no heroic efforts made on his behalf to pro­long his life. So he elected not to have surgery or radi­a­tion, but to be allowed to go home and die in peace.

Stom­ach can­cer is a painful way to die and my dad’s con­di­tion was no excep­tion. He was in a lot of pain and dis­com­fort as he lay in his hos­pi­tal bed, wait­ing for the nurse to bring some pain meds. We repeat­edly rang for a nurse, but no one came. His breath was short and shal­low and he was becom­ing very agi­tated. I couldn’t stand watch­ing him writhe in pain, so I crawled into the bed and laid my head on his chest. I said to him, “Dad, let’s breathe together,” and I began tak­ing long, slow, deep breaths. After a few min­utes, his breath synched up with mine and he qui­eted down and became peaceful.

As I lifted my head up off his chest, he squeezed my hand, looked me in the eyes and softly mur­mured “thank you.” As odd as this may sound, these two words marked the very first time I ever felt truly seen by my father. He came home from the hos­pi­tal the very next day and died a cou­ple of weeks later.

On the night he passed away, I was back home, 3,000 miles away. At 2 a.m. I sat straight up in bed, hav­ing been awak­ened by an image of a shoot­ing star. As I bolted upright, I absolutely knew with­out ques­tion that my father had died at that moment. About 20 min­utes later, the phone rang. It was my mother call­ing to say that he had died about 20 min­utes before. There is no log­i­cal expla­na­tion for this.

I believe that many peo­ple have sto­ries sim­i­lar to mine. We are innately con­nected to one another at lev­els far beyond what the ratio­nal, log­i­cal mind can explain. You have your own ver­sion, I’m sure. I’d love to hear yours.

Does human­ity have a long way to go? I guess it all depends on your per­spec­tive. When you con­sider how much we have advanced in the past 100 years, even though we still have wars and injus­tice in the world, I believe we are wit­ness­ing the death of this old par­a­digm. We are in the wan­ing days of the divide and con­quer, dom­i­nate and con­trol systems.

Can I prove this claim? Not empir­i­cally. But one only has to look at what hap­pened in Tianan­men Square, what hap­pened in Berlin with the fall of the Berlin Wall, what’s hap­pen­ing in the Mid­dle East with the Arab Spring, and what’s hap­pen­ing all across Amer­ica as peo­ple like you and I hold our own sys­tem account­able for being true to its found­ing prin­ci­ples. This is how it is unfold­ing, right here and right now, and it’s hap­pen­ing on our watch. Stay tuned.

Tagged as: awakening, Consciousness, dr. judith rich, energy, Human Interest, Infinite Intelligence, Rx For The Soul, transformation, Unity