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By Root 905 0

a critical stage. We now confront the supreme test of living sustainably on the Earth, in harmony with one another, and in communion with the living universe. If we can make the great turn toward home—if we can move from a path of separation to a path of communion and connection with our home, the universe, then humanity’s journey can continue to unfold. We can move into an era of reflection and reconciliation as a human family, then beyond into an era of deep bonding and restoration, and then into an era of flowing creativity. We have far to go and much to learn to complete our magnificent journey of awakening.

We live in momentous times and the choices we make now will powerfully influence the future course of evolution on the Earth. In these historic times, a paramount task for the human community is to discover a larger sense of identity and vision for the human journey, one that can bring us together in a common enterprise. The doorway into a larger understanding of who we are and where we are going can be found by becoming more conscious of where we already are—living within a living universe. In discovering we live within a living universe, we open to the heartening knowledge we are one of her precious offspring, seeking communion with her depths. We celebrate that the living universe has a central project—growing self-referencing streams of life at every scale—and that we are one flowering of an evolutionary dynamic at work throughout the cosmos. In seeing the universe around us as alive, we consciously seek to grow that aliveness within ourselves. What a wonderful paradox: We get our bearings for the journey ahead by recognizing that we are already home.

Chapter 9

Living in a Living Universe

Reading about the living universe and what it means for our lives offers one level of learning. A deeper and more powerful level of learning unfolds when we bring these insights into our lives through direct experience and shared conversations. To suggest a few possibilities, I’ve drawn themes from the book and placed them in two sections—meditations and dialogues. I encourage you to explore and expand upon these as a way to deepen your engagement with our living universe. For additional resources, see my website at www.awakeningearth.org.

Meditations

Ultimately, the goal of meditation is simply to relax into “ordinary reality” which, as we have seen, is quite extraordinary. Because the universe is alive, when we slow down, calm down, and come into the moment, we are opening into a subtle field of conscious alive-ness. Instead of striving to reach some imagined state of awakening, in meditation we relax the thinking mind, rest in the simplicity of the moment, and allow the miracle of a living universe to present itself in our direct experience. We don’t have to do anything. We are only required to be open in our experience—to be curious and awake to everyday life—and the first miracle of a living universe will become self-evident in our awareness. In that spirit, here are a few meditations drawn from this book that can support our awakening to a living universe.

Imagine Building a Universe (see Chapter 1)

Find a space without distraction and reread this section. In your imagination, feel yourself meeting the challenge of these building requirements. This exercise is not about understanding physics, it is about amazement and wordless understanding. Without words, feel the questions: What kind of universe is this? What kind of reality are we living within? What am I? Can I notice creation happening? As you go through the day, notice that the universe is not static but instead is a dynamic, evolving entity that is being continuously regenerated at every moment—and you are one of its manifestations that can know this because you have a capacity for reflective consciousness.

Seeing Ourselves as Giants (see Chapter 1)

Take the time to clearly visualize the cosmic ruler that runs from the largest to the smallest scale in the known universe. Take time to get a direct, bodily feeling for the largest scale with its