Mono

I understand this.  Monoculture really is a culturally loaded word.  It smacks of agribusiness and uniformity.  It triggers thoughts of all the evils liberal progressives think are rampant in the world today.  Fossil fuel dependence.  Environmental destruction.  Dehumanization of essential production processes.  Money as the cultural bottom line. 

But think about this.  All these extremes in our current culture started out as good ideas.  The discovery of fossil fuels created amazing new energy sources for human creativity.  Sustainable use of renewable resources is just destructive harvesting scaled down to a level where nature can recover from human consumption.  Similarly, elimination of humans from production often began in an effort to increase productivity to serve more or to save workers from backbreaking or harmful tasks.  When processes spiral out of control, it is often not their originally intended purposes that were evil, but that we have no counterbalancing values that tell us when to stop escalating our efforts in a certain direction.  When those new values do begin to appear, the momentum behind the original practice is so strong, that simply opposing it cannot stop it.  We need to learn how to completely transcend the process, turning its currently destructive energy into new and useful channels of creativity.

Take for example monoculture.  When this practice was first introduced, it was practiced on a scale that was combined with natural fertilizers, crop rotations, human scale cultivation.  Only gradually did the parallel practices of chemical fertilizers, mechanical cultivation, huge acreage, total lack of crop diversity, government subsidies, combine to make it counterproductive to the very foundations of sustainable cultivation.  Modern agricultural practices may still produce the huge amounts of food necessary to feed our burgeoning population, but they now do so at the cost of our groundwater, our soils, and our plant diversity amongst other things.  How can we transform this out of control process to maintain its benefits of scale while harnessing its destructive powers for positive ends.  Is such a transformation even possible?

What if reclaiming our agricultural land became a spiritual imperative.  What if the new order of American monastics transformed the Eastern practice of begging, of dependence on the laity for their sustenance, into a sincere intention to feed the world sustainably.  What if we repopulated the rural monasteries, or created rural communities to produce quality food for all.  In the past, the laity earned merit by supporting the spiritual community.  In the U.S., where our social structures evolved without spiritual underpinnings, practitioners need to create their own field of merit by re-spiritualizing the forms of production and supporting the laity so they can begin let go of  their dependence on destructive material forms.

Similarly, urban spiritual communities could begin to deliver quality healthcare, childcare and eldercare to the laity.  What if the spiritual community in the United States finally recognized that our materialistic culture had abandoned care and respect for all the foundations of life:  the earth, the basic needs of all people (their water and air, their food, health, and housing), for the people who have come before us (our ancestors, our elders).  By creating a new monastic order committed to living in the world and transforming it, we could create a new counterbalance to material domination and work towards actualizing a truly new, non-dual culture synthesizing material and spiritual reality, lay and monastic practice.  Nondual culture equals monoculture.

Mono

At first, this scenario of American life made me feel desperate, too.  After all, I live alone and I sometimes feel lonely.  But I quickly realized that for me loneliness is a phase that I know will pass, arising out of a particular set of circumstances that I need to understand in order to resolve.  I work hard to maintain my family connections and friendships.  I participate in a lot of activities and belong to several groups.  Most important, I also have an active spiritual practice which gives me a higher sense of my place within humanity and all of life.  Ultimately, I know that I am not alone, not even separate, and if I am experiencing separation and loneliness, it is up to me to seek connection and communion.  Yes, my path is to become a more integral, actualized human being, and always in relationship, always in service to a higher purpose.

So eventually, the message contained within The Lonely American became one of hope.  For if all these people are experiencing deep loneliness, surely they represent a great reservoir of energy for community building.  If we can temper the Myth of Rugged Individualism within the framework of Collective Creativity, then we can move towards a more complex but unified social network of intersubjective care.  We can begin to build a new global monoculture which is responsive to all kinds of individual and regional differences.  We can begin to create a new kind of monasticism based not on celibacy but on individual integrity, mutual respect, and intersubject support.  In response to the challenges of the 21st century, the new monasticism would be a householders path, but one where the house or home is redefined and reconfigured to respond to the fundamental needs of the individual or mono.  Instead of entering relationship to balance or complement one another, we would enter relationship to help each other attain our highest individual aspirations, talents and contributions to the whole. 

Beginning with the many individuals who now live in isolation, how can we bring them together while honoring their hard-earned individuality?  First, by helping them recognize that their need for community dovetails perfectly with society’s needs for increased trust and cohesiveness and the earth’s need for healing.  By downsizing and learning to share, we serve ourselves as we serve others and we serve the earth.  The very process of coming together to explore alternative housing options builds community.  Out of community comes trust and shared vision, the true foundations for successful building (or renovation) projects.  Out of successful housing projects come the living expressions of a truly new consciousness which honors the individual in mutual respect and service.   Finally, creating a vibrant, dynamic monastic order in the U.S. would bring the Buddhist tradition full circle to a new turning of the Dharma Wheel, a turning based at last on a truly authentic, indigenous path for 21st century Americans.  Instead of going forth into homelessness to begin the path to enlightenment, Americans would finally transcend their narcissistic self-centeredness by subsuming their needs in the greater need to create the forms of a more caring, cooperative world.

Of course this is sketchy because the actual process requires that people find the strength to overcome their isolation and reach out in search of community.  The beauty of it is that there are people like me who are willing to take that first step and work to create the first prototypes that will demonstrate the viability of this idea.  Monoculture is not some kooky counter-cultural idea suitable for only a few, it is a nascent idea waiting for the right conditions to burst into life and flourish.  Eventually, someone who is alive today will look around them as they stroll in some great city of the world and realize that everything is different.  People interact differently, they live and work differently, they exhude a sense of joy and contentment never before realized.  And even though this particular city is uniquely different than any other, and these people are somehow completely embedded in the uniqueness of their city, they retain an openness and trust completely in keeping with their difference and accepting of the differences of others.  There is a fluidity and flourishing that embraces diversity through respect and cooperation.  That’s monoculture.  That is the future.  And we can all work together to make it happen.

Mono

For me it is about following my spiritual path and opening to and living in greater connection to all that is.  So it brings me up short when I remember that in our culture homelessness has become a concept of defeat and failure.  Homelessness to an American implies nothing positive.  Not only does a homeless person lack all the connections and possessions that constitute American success, they are dependent only in ways that signify weakness in them and a burden for others.  Homeless people are a problem to be eliminated, to be solved or at the very least, swept under a carpet and out of sight.  As such, homelessness represents a failure in our collective consciousness to recognize and deal with our oneness with others.  In the United States, homelessness is the living manifestation of the lack of spirituality in the individual and on the collective level.

What is it about the homelessness I am about to undertake that makes it an experience I anticipate with joy and little trepidation?  Why do I not see myself as about to enter the ranks of destitute people that our society has marginalized and stigmatized?  How do I know that I will continue to grow and flourish, finding the support and care I need freely offered, or able to survive without support if that becomes necessary, even as I move beyond my family and friends and into the larger community of people I do not know and who do not know me?

Of course, in a very true sense, I will not be paring my life down to robes and a begging bowl.  I will have material resources at my command and healthy relationships with people who will support me in many ways.   Most important, however, I have an altered worldview that changes my understanding of individuality that is not conditioned by the American measures of success.  As I go forth into my version of homelessness, I see myself as embedded in, arising out of, and motivated by an ever-evolving oneness of  life.  My purpose is part of an overarching creative force that seeks to realize cooperation, cohesion, and unity in the universe.  I am one with the universal impulse to evolve and that impulse transcends and includes my personal desires and needs.  The more I let go of who I think I am, and open myself to becoming what the world needs me to become to help it transform, the less I fear and the more I can potentially contribute.

All this being said, it still remains true that I will step forth into a predominantly material culture that will not honor my path as I do.  At no other time or place in history, has there been less understanding or acceptance of the spiritual quest.  So what has brought me to this moment in my life?  However I envision it, how have I found the courage to give up my version of the American Dream to step off into what many, if not most, of the people I know will call a crazy adventure?  The answer that I am about to propose surprises me.  It is not the answer I would offer if I had only myself to consult; it is an answer that the Kosmos insists I see and reflect upon before I take a single concrete step on the next stage of my journey.

My simple answer would have been that I go forth on a spiritual quest.  Spirit will guide me and prepare my way.  But this is incomplete.  Spirit will guide me and help me, but spirit can only do this because of who I am and because of all the work I have done in my life before I make this transition.  Spirit has chosen me for this task not only because of my spiritual readiness, but also, and in many ways more importantly, because of my material preparedness!  This is so important!  We must see and understand this!  In a non-dualistic world, there is no separation between material and spiritual and there never has been.  Who I am in the material realm is a direct reflection of who I am in the spiritual realm, and God sees me as ready in both realms to undertake the work that we can do together.

God has chosen me to go into homelessness precisely because of the material and spiritual integrity my path has always possessed despite the materially dominant culture in which I have developed. Without always understanding how it was tied to spirituality, right relation to the material has been important to me from a very early age.  My critique of American materialism predates by many years my discovery of a positive spiritual framework with which to balance it.  If I consider my life in terms of the Buddhist path, renunciation of material attachment preceded renunciation of structures of self.  Even as a child, I understood that my parents’ inability to give of themselves could not be replaced by gifts of material things.  From this realization I began to question whether any offer of material attainment might be functioning as replacement for some more fundamental value I sought.  It was because of this I was able to reject the temptations of careers and relationships that did not lead to my highest aspirations, but promised instead mere cultural recognition.  Only very gradually, through an unswerving commitment to finding my truth by constant questioning of my relationships to all things and by discovering the the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of them all, that I gradually realized that it is the very need to define a self in relationship to another of any kind, whether material or spiritual, that causes the dissatisfaction and suffering of life.

Understanding my authentic self as a particular expression of spirit in the manifest realm, here to consciously create the future of humanity in its complete embeddedness in all that is, removes the confusion of duality once and for all.  Spirit and matter are one and, when we know this at the deepest level of being, everything we do is a conscious act of spirit in the world.  Knowing, we cannot choose to forget.  Similarly, knowing that everything is spirit in form, we look back on the contours of our life and the lives of others, knowing that spirit made all choices, makes all choices, and in our newfound awareness, all those choices become ours and all future choices become ours in oneness.  We can no longer separate ourselves from past or future suffering.  We must act to seek forgiveness for the suffering caused by our past ignorance and work in conscious effort to relieve the suffering that ignorance continues to cause and will continue to cause in the future until we create new ways of being and becoming in the world.

For me, my life has always been about finding more satisfactory ways to live in a material culture.  First I rejected the dominance of material things, then I accepted the reality of spirit, and now I go forth as a human being exemplifying the living unification of both realms.  It remains to be seen where this will lead but, if I am correct about this higher truth about the nature of reality, I expect it will start the wheel of Dharma turning once again.  Spirit and matter have always been one, now we can create a world that truly reflects our conscious awareness of this reality together.

Mono

As I look back on what has transpired, I see that I began the contemplation of homelessness with “right view” and ”right intention” mixed with quite a bit of unenlightened fear.   Thinking of homelessness as a state of mind seemed to let me off the hook of actually doing anything about it.  But the funny thing about mixing right view with right intention is that, of it’s own accord, this volatile combination leads directly to right action.  Somehow I couldn’t help it.  The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I had to actually leave this place and go forth and seek those factors which would help me on the path to integral enlightenment.  I have before me the model of the Buddha’s own life which involved the renunciation of great wealth and power to become an itinerant monk.  I have before me the Dharma in the form of the teachings which have been transmitted by many fine teachers.  And I also have faith in the Dharma as an ultimate Truth to seek, and the Dharma as a path to be followed.  And I have confidence that if I follow that path it will take me to a Sangha of like-minded human beings also commited to a reality that includes and transcends what it means to be a separate and isolated individual in an alien world.

Having transformed my worldview into one of homelessness, I actually become homeless.  Once homeless, life assumes a fluidity it never possessed before.  Without a home, what is the orienting principal of my life?  Following the path.  And where does the path lead?  To wherever the Truth beckons, to wherever my ego-orientation decreases and my oneness with all that is increases.  Suddenly the very uniqueness of my individuality acts as a beacon shining on a very particular path into the future; a path which both I and the universe are creating as we go. 

I have the strangest intuition: that each and every spiritually conscious person who is awake to the evolutionary impulse and acting to align themselves with it, is treading the exact same path.  It is a path of new dimensions, manifesting in individual material pieces held together by spiritual energy, so that the spiritual integrity or wholeness of the path exists even before the material manifestation becomes comprehensible as a whole to individual human perception.  Eventually, if enough people discover their unique entry to the path, which is spiritually connected to the paths of all others, then the physical manifestation will coallesce into a new, emergent entity visible to anyone, spiritually conscious or not, and will become accessible materially to those at any level of spiritual development.  At that point, the new spiritual consciousness will become manifest and stable in the world, acting as a visible expression of the non-dual truth guiding humanity into the future.

Mono

Today I felt the Buddha reminding me of his admonition to go forth into homelessness and I thought, “I am ready.  That’s exactly what I will do!”  But as the resolve formed, I heard the Buddha caution, “Be sure that the homelessness you seek is the path to true enlightenment.  What worked for me 2,500 years ago may not work for you today.”  So, of course I paused, and in pausing discovered that even the notion of “homelessness” is conditioned and must arise from a place of true non-attachment; not just from the act of leaving this place I am living.  And in contemplating this idea, I realized that in some fundamental sense, I have already left, moved into a non-attachment to “home”, and am wandering fluidly as the individual and collective dimensions of my “self” as they co-create an ever-evolving now.   In the truest sense, homelessness is radical non-attachment, being open to and allowing the creative impulse to use me, to take me where it must in every moment. 

And I realize as I write these words that awakening is both completely ordinary and totally profound.  There is nothing to do and everything to be done.  Nothing has changed and I will never be the same.  I have no home and at last I am home in the Kosmos.

Mono

Now consider the new “integral” spirituality which attempts to “modernize” the great traditions in order to make them more responsive to the contemporary global consciousness, and argues that a viable new worldview must incorporate our new awareness of evolutionary change.  If we use the yin/yang symbol as the focus of our contemplation, assuming that as an adequate symbol of the “old” it contains the same limitations inherent in the traditional views it captures, then we should be able to “push” the yin/yang symbol to incorporate this newness.  And so we can.

If what the old traditions lack is an awareness of the evolving nature of change, and this awareness is also lacking from the symbol, how can we add the expression of dynamic, evolving change into the symbol?   First, how might we make the symbol more dynamic?  Perhaps by adding more elements.  So lets add something that could represent diversity.  Instead of having one curved line dividing the space into two, add a second, mirror reflection of the first curved line.  Lo and behold, this simple action creates the sign for infinity within the circle!  Can you see it?  Just make a circle and, instead of trying to divide it with two curved lines, draw the infinity symbol inside it so that the ends of the infinity symbol touch the top and bottom of the circle, so infinity is vertical within the circle.  A circle containing infinity.  Beautiful!

But infinity within All that is, is not necessarily dynamic in the way we want it to be, symbolizing change over time and an ever-evolving creative process.  So lets imagine that we could pull the new symbol apart and create a spiral instead of a flat image. It might help to imagine that one end of the infinity sign, where it touches the circle, is actually a hinge, and you can see that point as a pivot point that allow you to pull apart the circle at the opposite point where infinity touches the circle.   Again, lo and behold, this new spiral (which I had to make it out of wire to see how it works), shows how the 2 halves of the orginal yin/yang symbol arise out of each other and become 2 alternating steps in an evolving process!  The yin/yang symbol represents change or complementarity in two dimensions (male/female; good/bad; form/emptiness, etc, etc.), but the new symbol has adequate complexity to incorporate a third dimension – change over time, or perhaps more accurately, change creating time!

It’s not that the old traditions didn’t know about change or time (think of the Buddha’s emphasis on birth, aging, illness, old age, death, rebirth), but change in a cultural or environmental sense happened so slowly that it was insignificant beside the changes represented in a human life.  In a sense, it was totally appropriate for spiritual seekers to look within to find the most complete and compelling lessons about reality.  The greatest existential questions were contained with the limits of a lifespan.  And those lessons remain relevant to us today but not sufficient to answer our current, deepest existential uncertainty.  What are we not only meant to be and become, but what are we meant to do in today’s world in order to address the suffering we confront as both an individual life and as a life within the human family?

It is not surprising that the new paradigm includes a very active/doing element, allowing us to address the material ills that confront us in the world.  These problems arose out of an unbalanced culture that all but denied the spiritual dimension of human aspirations, and therefore unwittingly exploited to the very edge of extinction the ground upon which our lives and all life depend.  Unlike all the great spiritual traditions which arose in predominantly spiritual times, the new spirituality arises in a predominanty material world.  It must give us a framework in which to hold our complicity in this destructive process in which we all to some extent participate and find within it the source of a new creative impulse capable of not only individual salvation but of collective human salvation as well . 

Turning the circle of yin/yang into the spiral of evolving change, visually demonstrates the movement of change out of and into the realm of the unknown and provides a dynamic framework for exploring the way in which duality emerges, increases to a point of extreme separation, then consolidates and synthesizes, eventually resolving, only to arise once again in a new level.  It is possible to imagine that a single human being evolves in this way, as well as the entire universe in which we are embedded.  In terms of human development, We are at the point of greatest tension, when the opposites are at the greatest extreme, and only a turning of the tide toward acceptance, consolidation, and synthesis can bring us home to a new monoculture out of which the evolution of human life can continue in an uninterrupted spiral into new radically new forms.

What this new symbol represents is the enduring truth of the old traditions becoming the ground out of which the new awareness emerges.  By contemplating this new symbol we can “see” the movement of the creative impulse:  non-being, emerging, multiplying, always bounded, expanding, creating connections, increasing cohesiveness, encompassing tension, changing direction, moving inward, unifying opposites, synthesizing difference, creating oneness, reaching transformative stasis/the great unknown/non-being, re-emerging, repeating process to keep creating life.  Aligning the human impulse with the creative impulse of the universe means creating a monoculture on earth capable of sustaining all life as it continues its expanding spiritual awareness of and physical unification of all that is.

Mono

So, I have a dream.  I dream of a time when all people are valued equally.  I dream of a time when every child who is born is greeted with an attitude of awe and wonder befitting a gift from the Great Spirit.  I dream of a time when every child grows in an atmosphere of support and encouragement so the individual gifts s/he brings will flourish and become an integral part of the great creative process of life.  And in my dream all people will live in mutual trust and respect, recognizing the beauty of our unique individuality and working cooperatively to weave our differences into an intricate web of life that forms the basis for infinitely evolving form.

And my dream is a waking dream, for I am trying to live the dream every day.  I strive every moment to create an atmosphere of trust and respect.  I try to open myself to the beauty of every individual I meet, understanding that all of us have developed in a world where the dream is only partially realized.  I work hard to turn away from practices that exploit me, other people, or any part of our planet.  I try to embrace practices that encourage sustainability, including denying myself things I want in order to understand what is truly important in life and ways to share it with all.  I try more and more to expand my sense of self, to transcend my small ego, so my actions flow seemlessly from a place of deepest connection and love with all creation.

And gradually, in my living dream, I come together with others who share my dream.  We are working collectively to change the norms and institutions that support the old paradigms of separation, hierarchy, competition, and scarcity, to support the construction of actual social and institutional forms to support unity, equality through difference, cooperation, and abundance.  We envision a world where spirit and form are reunited, neither privileged over the other, but understood as the two sides of the same reality. 

And I have a dream of what that reality will look like.  The world will become a monoculture, based on the sacredness of each individual, providing for each individual, understanding that each individual fully realized is the basic unit by which the wealth of a human culture is created.  Every individual will be guaranteed a room of he/r own, a healthy diet, a healthy environment, clothing, education, and the responsibility to contribute to the maintenance of the human family in exchange for the opportunity to contribute their gifts to the creative process of life.

I long to tell you the details of my dream, to tell you what the future will look like and how we will live in the new world I know is possible.  But even as I dream, the details remain ellusive.  Even as I dream, I recognize that dreaming is not enough, and I struggle to give birth to new ideas and new forms of practice that will help to make my dream into reality.  Because all of you are in my dream; my dream is of a future where nobody is left out or left behind. My dream is one where we all wake up together, recognizing our common humanity, and embracing the shared responsibility for creating a better future, trusting in and claiming our individual and collective greatness.

Dream your dream and claim your greatness!

Mono

Monoculture is the new movement, the new awareness.  It encompasses everything that is happening in this moment to create a new tomorrow.  It is the creative impulse at work.  It is spirit in form, form in motion, form cultivating its highest aspirations and actualizing them.

Cultivation by whatever means.  People everywhere are doing the work they have to do.  The poor are trying to raise their standard of living in a world that still has not learned how to share the wealth with all.  They don’t have time or means to debate their spiritual awareness with the cultural elites.  The middle classes of all places are doing their best to maintain or improve their physical lives at the same time they cope with the chaos produced by clashing cultures in a crumbling world.  Only the elites have time, energy and resources to consciously shape the new tomorrow.  And what will they sow?

The current economic elite has money and power.  This elite believes that they and their predecessors have created this wealth and power by their own effort and ingenuity and, therefore, money and power become tools they have rightfully earned to maintain their money and power.  Theoretically they can continue to pummel and buy their way into the future.  They can continue to build institutions and control governments and banks and industries that promote their ideals.  They believe in their superiority and entitlement to the point that they are willing to use the masses to consume the useless goods that produce their wealth only to destroy the world we all depend upon.  However, their vision is so inconsistent, so fundamentally flawed, so unsustainable, that it can triumph only through failure on the grandest scale.  Another Easter Island, writ large.

What can the conscious creatives possibly control in order to counterbalance the money and power of the economic elite?  Nothing!  Insofar as a conscious collective exists, its power rests in Spirit.  What the Spiritual Evolutionary recognizes, what s/he surrenders to, is he/r role as the servant of Spirit, equally valuable but functionally and qualitatively different from every other servant of Spirit.  There is no elite army.  We are not foot soldiers of God, the standard bearers of God’s message for the future.  We are servants of Spirit, just like each and every sentient being, acting to the best of our humble ability to manifest the compassion, generosity and loving kindness that Spirit has always worked to create through us.  There may never be a perfect world, but at last humans as the servants of Spirit are ready to help usher in a world of unprecedented peace, equality, justice and creativity. 

And as always, what is the biggest obstacle to our work?  Not money and power.  Ego.  The very word elite makes me shudder and I know has the same effect on many others because it is the language of separation.  It emphasizes the difference and not the continuity of people’s experience.  It is logically impossible for an elite to be inclusive, for it defines itself by those who do not belong.  Yet I think it is imperative for those with time, energy and resources to pursue this Spiritual Awakening to recognize that we do represent part of the true elite of the old regime/culture.  Whether we were blessed by a spiritual calling, financial opportunity, supportive family and community, or something else, our ability to awaken in this time and place is unusual and based on privilege not available to all.  We live in a world that has done its best to eliminate Spirit from consciousness, to deny He/r existence.  Most people are drowning in the real structures and subliminal messages of materialism.  Why were we given the privilege to rise in awareness?  Spirit has chosen us.  Not to become a new elite, but because we each have special gifts S/he has created to become tools in the transformation of Spirit and He/r creation so that all have the privilege to cultivate Spirit.

I understand the need spiritual leaders have to capture the way in which form and spirit move through stages, “becoming” in a spiraling sense ever higher and more inclusive, but elite does not capture the leading edge of this process.  In fact, I would argue that the degree to which a cultural, spiritual or financial elite exists or even remains a part of the articulated and actualized vision we are creating is exactly the degree to which we are at risk of failing Spirit, because that is the degree to which we fail to understand and live the Oneness of Spirit.  We must nurture and encourage the spirit in every individual, no matter at what level of spiritual awakening they exist.  If they do exist, they exist in Spirit and Spirit exists through them.

I question whether Spirit is really evolving beyond the perennial truths as some Spiritual teachers have claimed, or whether in our own Spiritual development, we are becoming aware of a dimension of Spirit that has always been there.  Form is still emptiness and emptiness is still form.  One in many, many in One.  Spirit is pre-ego, ego, and ego-less.  Ahah!  Spirit is a changeless ground and Spirit evolves in form!   No matter how deep your experience of emptiness and Oneness, your humanness remains embedded in the changing structures of form.  As long as you remain human, you cannot escape the constantly evolving demands of form.  In the past, when cultures and societies changed slowly and were for the most part isolated from one another.  Spiritual awakenings triggered movements, which transformed cultures, which eventually created institutions to contain both the teachings and the teachers and created sustainable connections between the spiritual culture and the culture at large.  Over time, institutions tended to go through cycles of rigidification and rebirth, but the dominant vision remained intact.  Spirit has always evolved through Form, it just did so in a way that humans could perceive only in the individual evolution from birth, through life, through death to rebirth.  Now as our inner awareness has deepened, our perception of outer change has expanded.  Remember, time and space are as illusory as Form!

The eternal truths have not changed.  Spirit has not changed even as S/he continues to change.  But our awareness has changed:  of both our inner space and our outer world.  The deeper our awareness, the more expansive our awareness, the more completely we must trust in and submit to Spirit if we hope to survive.  Spirit has always worked towards complexity, diversity, cohesiveness, and cooperation.  If humans cannot finally draw this teaching into their deepest and highest insights, then we are doomed. 

In the deepest sense, we are not creating the future.  Spirit does all the work.  S/he uses us whether we are conscious or not.  Whether the world continues to evolve with human life at the leading edge of Spirit’s creative efforts remains to be seen.  Perhaps S/he will find a way through us to resolve the inner contradictions of our current cultures and create a truly sustainable global monoculture.  Perhaps S/he will settle on a different solution that allows the forces of exploitative capitalism to destroy itself and the culture it built leaving behind remnants of humanity to try again in a tragically depleted world.  Or perhaps S/he’ll wipe out humanity in a great pandemic and give some other creature a billion years to manifest He/r dreams.  Spirit does have purpose, agency and creative impulses that we can and must support if Spirit is to continue to support us.

So, if there is a leading edge in human development, and if that edge is in part characterized by its consciousness, then those on the edge must be ever vigilant not to create a spiritual elite.  Every subatomic particle, every grain of sand, every human being at whatever stage of development in whatever line of development, is created by Spirit and does Spirit’s work.  The edge definitely has a purpose, but it is Spirit’s purpose.  We must create the boundary conditions to contain the work that all of creation is doing.  We must create the vision and the structure that contains us.  Just like the monastic movements of the past, the Spiritual seekers represent the highest aspirations of all, even if all do not recognize them or actualize them in that lifetime.  The recognized and accepted Spiritual seekers of any cohesive age, act as the moral compass, the spiritual touchstones of human activity.  Spirit is the impulse but it is also the anchor that keeps our hearts grounded as we walk our individual paths in form.

Many great Spiritual teachers are begining to articulate this vision and gather their followers to do the work they were called to do.  They are working passionately to articulate and promulgate their version of this unified vision and generating a field of energy capable of transforming individuals to a new way of being.  Andrew Cohen puts it this way:

Cultivating and creating with others an egoless field in which autonomous individuals can come together to be and to create a “new being” that transcends and includes individuality is nothing short of a miracle.”

Beautiful!  A monoculture!  ‘a “new being” that transcends and includes individuality”!  He also says:

In the new model, the point is no longer merely the transformation of the individual, it’s the evolution of self, culture, and the cosmos through the individual.

Yes, “self, culture, and the cosmos”!  But wait . . . aren’t these predominantly inner quadrant experiences?  My inner personal space, my inner collective space, and my personal rapture contemplating the ground of being in form?  How did we skip from my inner to Spirit’s outer?  What happened to the forms of my personal life, the forms of the society in which I am embedded and which to varying degrees limit the expressions possible for individuals?  In fact, isn’t that the biggest challenge W/we face?  How do W/we stop the juggernauts of social and environmental collapse?  Only the Spirit knows!  And our job as Spiritual Evolutionaries is to open our hearts, roll up our sleeves, and do the difficult work of transforming spirit into form.  So I hope I misunderstand Andrew when he says:

I know that this will never become a mass movement, because for all the reasons I’ve explained and more, it is just too demanding for most people.  But nevertheless, I am convinced that our success in transcending the ego together, so that a truly enlightened consciousness and culture permanently emerges and becomes stable, is inherently of profound significance for our collective future.

The move toward consciousness is already a mass movement!  Can’t you feel it?  Don’t you see it?  People are doing amazing things everywhere in the contexts available to them.  In the ghettos of our new megacities, the poor are creating entire new economies.  Look at the talk by Robert Neuwirth on Ted.com where he discusses the Shadow Cities.  In countries like Iran, the people are rising up to challenge the forces of oppression.  Think of the work of Muhammad Yunus with microcredit and now with social businesses.  Discover the work of accomplished scientists like Stuart Kauffman, who are revisioning their ideas to embrace Spirit rather than dismiss He/r.   People are working on new sustainable  forms of energy production and food production.  People are searching for solutions to deforestation, air and water pollution, and all kinds of resource depletion.  The new culture is rising because Spirit wants to create it and we are her servants whether totally conscious of this reality or not.

And I would argue, most people who recognize the need for and are acting to create a new society and a new culture are all aware at some level that they are compelled to do so by something bigger than their individual egos.  If they weren’t, the spiritual seekers could never hope to articulate a spiritual vision with a cohesive set of  moral values to effectively stabilize the emerging global monoculture.  For that is the role of the spiritual seekers, the leaders in the spiritual realm.  If we strip away as many of the necessary cultural and social trappings within which individuals must act to create, what do we find?  How do we live this reality?  How do we articulate the ethical concepts that make it possible and sustain it?  What new forms do we create to support not just our own continued development, but the development of  all along the trajectory of consciousnes that Spirit calls forth?  Everywhere, people are  asking:  “Tell me how it is possible to create and sustain a universally just, compassionate, inclusive, creative world, when I am still living in a world that is demonstrably unjust, cruel, exclusionary and destructive?  How can I do it?  How can I?” Those called to do spiritual work are being asked by Spirit to articulate answers to these questions and create forms to support their answers.

There is nothing inherently more demanding about spiritual awakening than any other truly creative process except that it demands absolute and total surrender.  Everything you do reflects your level of Spiritual Integrity.  Anything you do can and should be brought into question by others.  A man can get rich exploiting nature and still be seen as a great businessman with dispicable values.  A scientist does not lose his status as inspired genius even if he uses his discoveries to destroy millions of people.  Yet a true spiritual leader must become an expression of everything s/he holds to be true.  A spiritual leader must express integrity at every level of he/r being.  A true spiritual leader must always be humble and willing to learn the lessons that Spirit has in store.

And that is what is more challenging for today’s Spiritual Leaders:  how to stay open and evolving in an everchanging world.  How to continue to learn when confronted with the limits of their awareness as it comes face-to-face with conditions never before encountered.  The Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed all acted in very restricted environments compared to our own.  Part of their power derived from their understanding of the social and cultural conditions they lived in and their disciples lived in.  They did not experience culture shock, unlike many of the spiritual masters who came from the East to the West to spread their teachings.  Confronted with unprecedented personal freedom, they discovered – or failed to discover – the ways in which the structures in which they had been embedded supported their practices.  They floundered when confronted with undreamed of personal wealth.  They floundered when confronted with relaxed sexual mores.  Just as our contemporary Western teachers may flounder in their own ways, in their own struggles to remain integral in the face of ever accelerating change.

No one undertakes a true spiritual journey who is not called.  Without the beckoning voice of Spirit, the guiding voice of Spirit, the spiritual journey would indeed be too demanding for anyone.  There is no room for arrogance on the spiritual journey.  Even those with the clearest calling can lose their way and mistake the ego’s call for the voice of Spirit.  We must remain ever vigilant, we must remain always humble, for the power is not ours, it is Spirits always.

Too many words!  Too much thought!  Enough of this meditation.  I’ll return to the ongoing Koan of Monoculture another time.

Mono