Changing Consciousness

I was at a seminar on Friday where a panel of local people (MPs, local government, business, “green teens”) spoke on the question “What does a sustainable future look like?”
It was an interesting thing to listen to – as what seemed to emerge out of all the different people’s comments was the need for a change in the way ‘we’ (as a collective modern western society kind of entity) think. A change in the very nature of what we habitually do, what we hold important, what we strive for.
It made me think about how there is a growing movement around the world of people that believe there will be some sort of an “event” near the end of 2012 (some even narrow this down to Dec 21 2012, in conjunction with what equates to the final entry of the Mayan calendar). Some people believe this will be heralded by calamity – a huge series of natural disasters that will devastate the entire infrastructure of the modern ‘western’ world – a situation many of them refer to (somewhat ironically in my opinion) as a “reboot”. Some of these people believe that this event is actually about a shift in consciousness.
I have been pondering what important components of this consciousness shift might be or rather, what I would hope they might be.
So far I have loosely come up with;
• becoming more mindful of why we think what we think and do what we do
• living more meaningfully
• practising what you preach/being the change you want to see
• sharing more of self (ideas, believes, actions) in local community


On deeper delving I have come up with the following.
This consciousness shift is something humans are capable of.
I think the general (and increasing) lack of this now is easily attributed to the society we have created for ourselves in the modern world**. In a culture where money and stuff is the measure of success it PAYS to complain, take things personally, be defensive and/or aggressive and have almost a victim attitude. It does not pay, in that materialistic way, to be compassionate and forgiving to those people you judge to have transgressed against you. You can sue, you can be recompensed, you can get newspaper articles written about you and get a gang of followers supporting you with an atmosphere of "poor you" further perpetuating your disempowerment and literally keeping you down.
This, in my opinion, tends to be a negative way to live, the way most people do it (which is in that disempowered victim type way and not the positive empowered standing up for your own rights way).
Perhaps this is one of the options for the consciousness shift - coming to terms with this balance between standing up for your rights/being compassionate to the motivations of others (positive) and whinging about everything that seems unfair and taking everything as a personal attack (negative).
I see it even here on this website and of course it is a natural normal human reaction and if that is where you are in your personal development and you are happy and content to be that way, that's fine and dandy (and normal) - we do what we know how to do and when we know better, we do better - and this is what we are discussing here - the opportunity to transcend the natural normal human reactions and utilise the new abilities that evolution has brought to this human creature. Mindfully becoming more than we have been before and are now.
This is the new evolution.

Feeling empowered and positive is a far more energy efficient way to live than having a negative, poor-me, everyone-is-against-me, look-it's-happened-to-me-again, oh-I can't-do-that-coz-I’ve-got-< insert condition here> attitude.

The human being is equally able to choose to take a positive compassionate attitude as they are to choose a negative attitude. I know which one puts a genuine sincere smile on my face and gives me more energy and motivation to get out in the world spreading the love and being of meaningful use to others.

And that is what it is... a choice - meaning that YOU are in control of you, learn to be worthy of that and live up to all that it means.
I would like to see more people choosing the positive on a more consistent basis and in the very least take a NEUTRAL stance, if you can't assume the positive at least do yourself a favour and don't assume the negative.
If you perceive someone is being an arse to you
* firstly, remember that that IS your perception and it could well be that they aren't even talking about you and it's just your ego and perceptions of your self that make the cap fit (so to speak)
* secondly, detach yourself from you ego and actually look at what they have said and see if it has any merit or is even an attack and not just a comment of fact that you have taken a dislike to because of your own emotional baggage (something helpful here coudl be - does this situation occur with other people, is it a familiar thing that always seems to happen to you whereever you go?)
* thirdly, if they are in fact, without a doubt, abusing you, that's THEIR problem and, of course, says screes about them and has nothing to do with you personally (especially in the anonymous environment of the internet!) and don’t let yourself be drawn in to it (don't dignify it with a response).

What people believe about you is their business.

Please use your power to choose.



**This 'modern world' humans have created (the 'developed" world) is like most human led schemes - it was not well thought out for the long term and to quite a degree indulged the percieved wants and needs of the people with the power rather than the people with the appropriate intelligence.
(eg: one such scheme is european colonisation of New Zealand - a very unique ecosystem dominated by birds with only ONE kind of terrestrial mammal (teeny insect eating bats who prefer to scurry on the ground than fly) and birds who have evolved many mammalian traits and fill the niches that mammals do in other places. This influx of people led to the introduction of many mammal species that have devastated our environment. One of the things these european settlers thought was a good idea was to introduce possums to start a fur trade. Possums directly compete with our native birds for food and also eat eggs and females birds on the nest and have led to the local extinction of many native plants and creatures. Another 'bright idea' not well thought out was the introduction of stoats with the intention that they would eat all the rats. No one bothered to think from the stoat's point of view... why on earth would they bother to chase agile wily fast rats around when there was a wealth of flightless birds who's idea of defence was to freeze and camoflage.... but I digress!!!)
We really strived to create this modern 'western' society where we have all this stuff but we have not thought throughand put processes in place to constructively and purposely utlise the benefits this modern world has created for us and do in in a sustainable way that will leave the world in a better state than we found it.