Spirits Grow to Include the Whole
“Higher beings include more and more living things within their self-story, until at last, there is no Other.”
—Orson Scott Card, The Xenocide
Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.
“Ethics is knowledge of interconnection.”
—Aldo Leopold
Consciousness moves towards the whole. As your spirit grows, the more whole you become. The more we know the more we are. As our area of concern and as our territory of influence expands, more of the world is included in our concept of self. As we grow, we grow from me to we, part to the whole, local to global, self to Self.
The more developed our consciousness, the more concern and compassion we have for others. As consciousness grows and expands, it encompasses more within its boundaries until borders that separate “us” from “them” are transcended and consciousness is boundless. On a more mundane or material level, as technology interconnects more and more of our planet into a single organism, the more we can see our common heritage and connection with all the peoples of the world. The more this technological connection and compassionate interconnection grows, the more we as individuals become— and the more we as individuals become, the more the whole becomes. The network grows to the square power of the nodes on the network (Metcalfs Law*).
In this ever-growing feedback loop the planet transforms itself into planetary well-being and light. The more we recognize “them” as “us” the more we become. The more we see the unity of who and what we are, and see and feel the suffering of anyone as our own, our spirits grow to include the whole. We need to see self-development as the development of the collective Self. The path to maximum personal wealth, happiness, consciousness and security is the path to global wealth, well-being and security. Or in other words, the path of self-development is Self-development.
Spirit Includes, Fear Excludes
As we grow up, our awareness grows out in ever more inclusive circles of knowledge, understanding, compassion, connection, and unity. Ethics is knowledge of interconnection, compassion is experience of interconnection, consciousness is awareness of connection, and unity is transcendence of connection.
The more developed our awareness and consciousness become the more compassion we have for others who do not have what we have, who are suffering, who have needs that are not being met. As we grow in consciousness we see that all consciousness is linked, that we are all a part of one Organism and the health of the whole is dependent on the health of the parts. The Organism can survive the dis-ease, even the death of some of the parts but it will never reach its maximum potential if it or parts of It are diseased or dying. Enlightened self-interest points clearly to making sure that everyone one is connected to is healthy and capable of playing a vital role, their role, in evolution’s transformations.
Once we reach a certain plateau of enlightened self-interest or altruistic generosity and empowerment we want to help, we want to get involved in making the world a better place, we want to do what we can do to improve the world, to join and play the game of making the world a better place than when we found it, to heal, to improve, to evolve the planet and all its inhabitants, to evolve with the planet, to join the great transformation out on the cutting edge, on the frontlines of cosmic evolution.
On the other hand, the more we learn to fear (all fear is learned) the more we exclude others, the unknown, from our circle of consciousness and awareness. And the more we limit ourselves. Fear is always of the unknown, the out-of-our-control unknown that could change our status quo. The more attached we are to what we have the more we are afraid of what we do not control and its potential to disrupt what we have. Given that over 99% of the “known” Universe is invisible, and at least 96% is unknown at this point in time, a fear of the unknown is a profound limitation on what we are and can become. Fear is, at its core, suicidal. It is a limiting of options, of alternatives; it is a closing off to the rest of the Universe and it possibilities.
It is one thing in self-development to work on the self, to nurture our own self, our bodies, spirits and consciousness. This is good. But we get to a point where the hungry soul realizes that it is not enough to just nourish the self. In a world of 7 billion human conscious entities, the idea of creating a paradise of or within ones own body, ones own self and consciousness becomes limited. A world that works for just us is not a paradise, it is a prison. An evolved being, a full self-developed person in a world of poverty and under-development is not just a contradiction in terms and an impossibility, it is such a narrow focus on reality as to make the idea of “self” development a joke. We are only truly what we can become, a fully realized conscious being walking in the light of God when all people in our world are similarity blessed. We only reach our highest potential when all people are members of our society; all the people of the world are fully contributing members of global society. Then the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A global society where all members are fully functioning is a paradise, a place of unbounded wealth, progress and evolution.
In a society where everyone is becoming linked technologically and through the consequences of failure, we need to be for all, or we are none. Either we make the whole system work, or the whole system fails. If everything in the body is in perfect health, except the heart, and it fails, the entire organism dies. The world is now as interconnected as the human body. We need to make sure the health of the entire system is perfect, not just the “wealthy” parts of the global body.
* Metcallf’s Law: The usefulness or utility of a network equals the square of the number of users; usefulness equals network nodes*2