I am increasingly called to focus on the nature of my being as Homo Sapiens. In fact, it feels like we’re being called, as a species, to evolve now beyond that stage of our development process. For it is the very nature of the animal’s survival, “me & mine-centric” focus that is driving us to destroy the life conditions that are sustaining us. We are at a height of developing and manipulating life on this planet to fulfill human desires, which is turning into an insatiable greed for power and accumulation capable of destroying life, as we know it. There have been other times in the evolution of life on our planet that has hit such thresholds, requiring either an evolutionary leap to adapt or destruction of that life form, if it cannot. In the past, it has often required a physical adaptation, this time it appears to call for an expansion of perception and consciousness to transform our old instinctive patterns. Evolution has not stopped and we are now in a position to proceed to our next phase of possibility.
As evolution moves from simpler to more complex organisms (organelles to single cells to multi-cellular organisms,… to Homo Sapien), there is an impulse towards unification, that focuses on the relationships between parts. Parts that had functioned as disparate, independent entities integrate to work together for the good health and functioning of a whole new, more complex organism. In a healthy human adult it is estimated that we have approximately 30 trillion cells working together. The value of isolated parts (organs, limbs, etc) made up of cells (smaller component parts) is insignificant beside the function and value of the totality of a healthy human body. Both context and relationships come to the fore.
Homo Sapiens are in and part of the context of the living system we call Earth. It is Earth that gives us almost impossibly narrow conditions that support and help life to thrive. Earth is in and part of a solar system, galaxy, and cosmos. None of these parts are isolated and totally independent from the whole, any more than any of my inner parts (cells, organs, limbs,…) are independent from the rest of my body. If they start to behave that way, we call it a cancerous or an auto-immune condition, which if continues unabated, will kill the whole system.
Now that we are at a point of being able to destroy life, as we know it, it is time to integrate into our next phase of being – a more complex being. I’m realizing that this means expanding our sense of “me and mine” and our plaintiff cry of “What about me?!”, to embrace the needs and health of the others around us. To recognize them as other cells in our planetary body – like cells working together within an organ. If we don’t, we become like a cancer or autoimmune disease in the system, which if unabated, will “kill” that system. (I use “” around kill/destroy because energy, & therefore its denser form of matter, is neither created or destroyed, only its form is altered – 1st law of thermodynamics).
It is our choice as individuals within a collective. Am I willing to expand my perception beyond only the well-being of me & mine, to seeing me & mine as cells in a whole new system that depends upon my collaboration and good will within the whole context, to survive and thrive?
I say Yes!!