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By Root 929 0

by massive waves of civil unrest. Instead of a single crescendo of crisis and conflict, there will likely be momentary reconciliation followed by disintegration, and then new reconciliation. In giving birth to a sustainable world civilization, humanity will probably move back and forth through cycles of contraction and relaxation. Only when we utterly exhaust ourselves will we burn through the barriers that separate us from our wholeness as a human family. Eventually we will see that we have an unyielding choice between a badly injured (or even stillborn) planetary civilization and the birth of a bruised but relatively healthy human family and biosphere. In seeing and accepting responsibility for this inescapable choice, we will work to discover a common sense of reality, identity, and social purpose. Finding this new common sense will be an extremely demanding task. Only after we have exhausted all hope of partial solutions will we be willing to move forward with an open mind and heart toward a future of mutually supportive development. Ultimately, in moving through our initiation, we can grow from our adolescent ways as a species into our early adulthood and consciously take responsibility for our relationship with the Earth, the rest of life, and the universe.

Humanity’s Journey of Return

As we open to this new understanding of the universe, aliveness and awe return to the world around us. Where the existential mindset of the industrial era bleached the life out of nature and left a machinelike cosmos filled mostly with dead matter and empty space, the consciousness of this new era awakens the intuition that a living presence permeates the universe that—with equanimity spanning billions of years—sustains the unfolding of all life, including that of the human species.

Our return is not only to the Earth that supports us, and to the community of life that surrounds us; it is also a return to the living universe that sustains us. After maturing through the fire of our collective rite of passage, the human community can choose a path of learning to live in greater harmony with the Earth, peace with one another, and communion with the living universe. Ultimately, we seek to relax into the natural peace of communion with the totality—the Mother Universe. Recognizing this, we can look at everyday life in a new way. We catch glimpses of the interwoven fabric of the cosmos and our intimate participation within the living web of existence. Less often is reality broken into relativistic islands or fragments. Even if only for brief moments, existence will be glimpsed and known as a seamless totality. Touching the aliveness of the universe, even momentarily, transforms our lives. The renowned Sufi poet, Kabir, wrote that he saw the universe as a living and growing body for fifteen seconds and it made him “a servant for life.”5

In this new era, we will regard the universe as the nurturing body of the Cosmic Feminine. Moment by moment, over billions of years, she sustains this cosmic garden as her offspring grow to consciously recognize and participate in her magnificent work. The Cosmic Feminine is not remote. We are immersed within, and created from, her body. We are She. Science strips away superstition and finds the miracle of a living universe. The sacred returns to the world.

The wisdom culture of the next stage is more ordinary and accessible to us than we may think. During the stage of the awakening hunter-gatherers, our ancestors would have been incredulous if someone suggested that millions of people could learn to live and work together in the manner now considered ordinary in advanced industrial nations. They would have been amazed to see us living in massive cities, driving cars on freeways, operating computers and television sets, and working in enormous organizations. We now take our urban-industrial way of perceiving, living, and working for granted. But, to the ancient hunter-gatherer who had yet to establish a village way of life, the thought of people able to function in a manner common to the industrial era