There is a challenge this year for the 99 Days of Peace Through Unity www.peacethroughunity.earth that runs from June 18^th to Sept. 24^th. Starting with the World Unity Week over the summer solstice, it concludes with another World Unity Week over the autumn equinox. This is an opportunity for those who would like to help co-create a better world to share knowledge, skills, ideas, experiences, music, healing and to get to know each other a bit and celebrate, globally. 

The challenge can be a personal one or for a group. For the personal one, it could be to do something everyday (99 days) that will help you to evolve further into the person you aspire to be in order to help humanity and the earth evolve safely and well through this time. This could be a daily act of kindness, or being grateful before consuming food or when buying something, …

What are the most relevant changes I could make as a contribution in our present context? We, humans have evolved now to the threshold of our current capacity as individuated beings working in our separate, often competitive, capacities. Our species has the power to destroy life as we know it. Evolution progresses from simple to more complex systems through integration – extinction is an alternative.

I believe that our next possibility, is to radically collaborate, learn to co-create, integrate and become the next level of a cohesive complex system or whole organism. Still stuck in our separation consciousness, humanity is behaving like autoimmune or cancerous cells in a fledgling new Whole of humanity, or a planetary system. Diversity is key.  So it is not about homogenizing our individual diverse gifts, talents and offerings, but instead seeks to harmonize them – comparable to a group of musicians with different instruments that can harmonize together to become an orchestra.

This contemplation instigated me to think about what I most need to change in order to become a more evolved version of myself: One that reflects the values of the world that I would like to help create. And what is it that prevents me from becoming that now? From a niggling resistance to choosing something too substantial, I realized that there lurked a subtle fear, disguised in many excuses. Delving deeper revealed that it was that basic fear of unworthiness, rejection, failure even survival. (Hmmm, survival of who – my body? my persona? reputation? identity?…?) That is not grounded in new paradigm where we are each unique and valuable contributions to the Whole. It definitely needs shifting.

So where does this fear come from? I realized it was from how I’ve learned to use Judgement – right, wrong, good/bad,… feeling compelled or just automatically, unconsciously, judging because that is how we were brought up to cope with life. Most of us, have an inner critic that constantly judges others, what is going on around us, and especially, ourselves – and we can be ruthless judges!

Yet, to make an appropriate judgement, I need to have confidence that I know and understand the full situation. Do I really know and understand, in all of its complexity, anything that is happening in my life? At best, I, like most humans, can only perceive a part of what is happening.  This is limited by mainly relying on my five senses plus my personal intelligence. Sometimes, just learning one detail that I didn’t previously know about a situation, can completely change my judgement of it. This can utterly alter my experience.

Critical judgement is a necessary survival tool in a world where separation consciousness invokes the need for protection – of me/us versus them.  Critical judgement has been a pillar in our old paradigm. It is essential for survival in, & very helpful for negotiating successfully through, a world founded on separation and competition. It is also the primary mechanism to discern unworthiness in all its gradients, which enables the justification of the us/them divide. This is a pillar of the old world paradigm that has brought us to this dangerous point in our evolution.

A necessary step for individuals in coming into our next evolutionary stage towards Oneness as a new Whole involves emptying out what separates us & creates barriers to unifying. And I feel that my compulsion to critically judge is obstructing my capacity to behave as if all others are fellow/sister cells are one with me, to co-create this marvellous new super level of system/organism. I need to move from automatically reacting according to my inner critic, to consciously choosing, who and how I want to contribute. This is a good opportunity to change that old pattern.

So, what if I try to just observe, all that I experience, without judgement? Instead of judging, I choose to perceive and accept all events, people, places, exactly as they are, without distortions of how I think they should be. Then, remember that they serve as invitations to expand my intelligence and experience, by asking “What more have I to learn about this?  What does my initial reaction teach me about who I think I am? There must be a context that created what I’m now experiencing and the criteria by which I feel compelled to judge. Can I put aside my beloved opinion/bias and just focus on what is mine to do?”

If the situation requires an immediate or quick response, I want my default reaction to be – “What can I do now that is for the highest good for all?” – reflecting how I want to show up in the world. Rather than feeling pulled into or influenced by anything or anyone that “pushes my buttons”, I will pause enough to consciously choose to respond in a way that reflects my values and what I want to help create in the world.