A Shift in Perspective That Changes Everything
I started a personal transformation coaching practice in 2008 called Your Great Life. I stepped aside in 2013. But now the work has an urgency to it. And it’s the circumstances humanity faces that are calling me back, not to the practice, but to the message encapsulated in “Your Great Life.” The message is “transformation. But given the circumstances, the question. “What do I mean by Your Great Life” is understandable.
So, what do I mean?
In the words of America’s great poet laureate and winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, Bob Dylan: The Times They Are A-changin‘. Indeed they are! And the rate of change over the last 60 years has been steadily accelerating. Are you prepared?
1964 was my 13th year on planet earth. I was born in the waning hours of December 31st, 1951. My first 12 years were during what many in the U.S. at the time saw as the golden years. World War II had come to an end, and the world order was drastically altered.
But while the U.S. economy was booming and the mood was still one of celebrating peace, trouble was looming. By the time I was born, the certainty of peace was no longer so certain. The Korean Conflict, as it was called (it was an undeclared war) began a year-and-a-half before I was born and is still not over. The armistice reached on July 27, 1953, was nothing more than a lid on a slowly re-heating pot. Towards the end of my 14th year, Nov. 1, 1955, war broke out between North and South Vietnam. Ostensibly, this was a civil war, but the Soviet Union backed the North, and by 1959, the U.S. had stationed “military advisors” in the South.
By the end of the decade, there was MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), which was the primary deterrent to keeping the Cold War from turning into a true War to End All Wars – an end human civilization, if not humanity in total. In truth, the post-World War II period was an era of intense anxiety as well as dynamic, creative change.
By 1963, 40,000 U.S. troops had been committed to what amounted to a proxy war with the Soviet Union in South Vietnam. The youth were growing restless, and Bob Dylan’s prophetic song was birthed.
Well, the 1960s decade was certainly a time of change! But the peace that the counter-culture of my generation hoped for was not to be. A backlash fomented by reactionary forces on both sides of the issues (the War in Vietnam and Civil Rights in the U.S.) planted the seeds of a culture war that fully flowered by 1980.
It’s been a long, strange trip, indeed. And look where we’re at today!
Democracy in the U.S. is under threat as the previous President refused to accept the results of the election despite assurances from members of his own administration that there had been no massive fraud that could have altered the outcome. Despite exhausting all legal challenges for lack of any credible evidence, he refused to publicly accept the truth; privately, he reportedly admitted he lost.
Still, he took action in the hopes of stopping the peaceful transfer of power and a protest rally, complete with a speech by him filled with inuendos (in crime family fashion) fomented violence by a mob that entered the Capitol building in search of the Speaker of the House and Vice President threatening their lives and, by their presence, the lives of any lawmakers they might find.
The former president is now seeking re-election. There is no certainty about the outcome. There are plenty of reasons to believe he will do everything in his power if elected (or not?) to rule this country as a dictator in the faux democracy style of Russia, China, and other nationalist-style countries.
All of this in the U.S. while human-induced climate change threatens all life on earth as we know it. And in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the worldwide wealth gap is astonishingly wide.
According to the World Inequality Report:
- The poorest 50% of the population own just 2% of total net wealth, an average of PPP $4,100 per adult in 2021.
- The middle 40% of people own 22% of total net wealth, an average of PPP $57,300 per adult in 2021.
- The richest 10% of people own 76% of total net wealth, an average of PPP $771,300 per adult in 2021.
Yes! The times they are a-changin’ and they have been headed toward this inflection point since the end of WW II (if not since before WWI). Trouble is a-brewin’, and any notion of certainty has gone out the window. Indeed, what great life could I possibly be writing about?
Well, now that I have got your attention, I offer you a choice. Take this article for what it’s worth, and move on with your life. Or consider a shift in perspective that changes everything.
Life is the Principle of the Absolute.
Life lives — expresses itself — in relationships. Life includes all of the universe, both seen and unseen. Life, as used here, transcends and includes life in the biological sense. It is possible that when the galaxies of supposedly dead matter are considered from the viewpoint of their unity, they can meet the criteria for life. Reproduction of matter may not be as easily evident on scales smaller than galactic, but I suspect it can be seen there. Already, there are pictures of what has been described by scientists as a nursery for newborn stars. They may mean that metaphorically, but who’s to say it ain’t so?
When Life is seen to be absolute, it becomes clear that there is no death. Therefore, there cannot be a relationship between Life and death. There is only a relationship between birth and death (transition points between the manifest and un-manifest). There’s plenty of room for alternative, unseen forms in this mysterious universe.
Life is relationship
For Life as the absolute, relationship within unity is best defined (by us) as the state of affairs between the differentiated parts of the whole.
On the personal level of life on this planet the word relationship points to the quality of the interactions between any and all objects of perception. This includes all that we apprehend and comprehend as well as the relationship between the perceiver and the perceived. And yes, it includes all of our thoughts, feelings, and imaginations.
Simply put, relationship is the manifest potential of immediate experience. Furthermore, when you speak about your “life,” you are speaking about the manifest potential of your immediate experience. To state it more directly, then, life is relationship, and relationship is life!
But please, don’t take my word for it! Leave any and all objections or approval to the side and observe deeply for yourself. Is there anyone or anything that you can sense that does not fall into one of the three elemental categories of quality: attractive, repulsive, or insignificant?
Please, take all the time you need. Be curious and observe with all of your senses. Be totally honest to understand the facts of the matter. You are not determining if this good or bad. There is just the curiosity to see what is.
Two Great Mysteries
There are two great mysteries that science has yet to answer. And it is not at all clear they will be able to do so within the current parameters they have restricted their search.
In physics, there is the so-called hard question of consciousness. And in biology there is the search for the origin of life.
Neurophysics
Many readily admit that there’s the possibility they will never be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt they have the answer. Their easy solution to the hard problem is to discount the question altogether. You know, ignore it.
Others want to shift the burden of the search onto neurobiologists or … You know, push it away.
And there are some who are convinced consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon we don’t, and don’t need to, understand. They’re, you know, attached to their answer.
Biochemistry
The biochemist doesn’t seem to have a problem with being repulsed by the question. And they certainly don’t ignore it. On the contrary, they are sure that if they just keep experimenting, they will find the answer to the origin of life (at least life as we know it on Earth). Yes, they are attached to that position. And some, I dare say, are attached to the point of being identified by the problem
The roadblock for both
The hard problem of consciousness has been recognized by neurophysics. How is it possible for consciousness to arise from unconscious matter? But I am not so sure that biochemists recognize that they face an equally challenging conundrum. How is it possible for life to emerge from dead matter?
Frightened by the Truth?
There is no such thing as dead, unconscious matter. We just don’t recognize life and consciousness on every level. Only Conscious Life can beget conscious life.
I am neither a theist nor an atheist. I am that, a manifestation of That I Am. I am no different than you, and you are no different than me. The mystery remains because we live and move and have our being within it.
Just as my eyes cannot see my face or whole body except as reversed by reflection, we cannot see Life except as it is reflected by death.
To recognize this is the shift in perception that changes everything. And right now everything needs to be radically changed. But this shift is not the last, it is only the beginning.
The beginning of your great life.
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