It is a fact of human history that paradigm shifts do occur—new worlds do open up—and whenever they do it is because some group of individuals found the courage to leave one paradigm behind and embrace a new one. It is nothing less than a shift from one reality to another. It is a journey into a new world. Those who are first to venture forward on this journey must do so without agreement from the majority because they are seeing a possibility that others do not yet see.
We all see the world through a preexisting paradigm or worldview that acts as a filter, allowing us to perceive only in ways that align with what we already believe to be true. In other words, we see the world through a set of beliefs about the world, and these beliefs shape our experience of reality. When a paradigm shift occurs, the world changes shape. Our experience of reality alters. We are on the same planet, but the world is different. We are in a new reality. As with any true spiritual practice, the Mutual Awakening practice is a doorway into a different reality—a new world. It has often been the mystics of any age that have played the role of harbingers of new paradigms because they have ventured into possibilities far beyond the norms of their time.
The work of the Evolutionary Collective is an experiment in unleashed creativity and divine love. Our aim is to co-create a new world and shift into a new paradigm of human relatedness. Mutual Awakening practice opens doorways of experience that reveal this new world of possibility. It is a world that initially shows itself indistinctly in the form of intuitions, images, and sensations. If we continue the practice, deeper insights and realizations gradually begin to give this new possibility shape and form.
As the shapes and forms become clear, we have the opportunity to learn to embody them in our lives. The embodiment of new possibilities is the perfect description of the work of the Evolutionary Collective, and it is exactly how paradigms shift and new worlds are born.
The most vivid historical example of a paradigm shift is the cultural change that took place during the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the span of two centuries, the dominant perception of reality shifted from the God-centered world of the medieval church to a world of scientific thought, rationality, and experimentation.
A new world was born. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries certain artists and intellectuals known as the Romantics began to cast a critical eye toward the advances of the Age of Reason. This literary and cultural movement introduced the initial stirrings of another paradigm shift that many agree is yet to be fully realized. In many ways, the work of the Evolutionary Collective can be seen as an extension of the romantic imperative.
The Age of Enlightenment brought about a universe that was seen as fundamentally rational, a world governed by natural laws that could be understood, manipulated, and controlled. The Romantics saw a universe that was organic and mysterious. They embraced the rationality of the Enlightenment and at the same time felt that any belief that the universe could be controlled was naive. To them the universe would always remain infinite, mysterious, and ultimately unknowable.
The consciousness of the Enlightenment taught us to see the world as a collection of “things in space.” In this view the universe is an expanse of vacuous nothingness, an empty three-dimensional stage in which inanimate things and intelligent actors exist. Part of our inheritance from this time is that we experience reality as a collection of objects that can be manipulated and controlled, and we ourselves are one of those objects.
When we are engaged in the habit of objectification, we relate to each other as things to be manipulated. At this level of relating, what we are actually connecting to is our ideas about each other. We see the other as a set of characteristics and, consciously or unconsciously, pressure them to act in accordance with how we imagine them to be.
We have all felt this pressure. Imagine a time when you were visiting old friends or family who did not see you as you are, but as they imagined you to be from some time in your past. The feeling of being objectified is the feeling of not being seen. It is stifling and limiting, and we are often disappointed to find that we act like the person they think we are, rather than who we actually are.
To enter into the new paradigm of human relatedness we must break the habit of objectification. We must move beyond seeing each other exclusively as things and make direct contact with the true immensity, complexity, and infinity of who we really are.
In this new world we recognize a continuity of being that many of the Romantics wrote about. In this we discover that we are not isolated individuals in relationships with other individuals who are separate from us. We exist within what would better be described as a field of relatedness in which we are embedded within an interpenetration of systems—selfsystems, cultural systems, and belief systems.
Have you noticed that we act differently, feel differently, and think differently around some people than we do around others? Take a minute to imagine one of the places where you spend a great deal of your time— maybe at work or school. Think about the conversations you have, the thoughts you have, the way you feel in that place. Would you have the same conversations, the same thoughts, and the same feelings at the beach or spending a day with your lover in the park? This simple observation is more profound than it first appears.
Our actions, thoughts, and feelings depend on the circumstances around us. We are not separate from those circumstances. We are not isolated individuals that exist in an environment that we shape through the use of force and control. We are a dynamic part of a complex natural system, and that system includes other human beings and the interactions and connections we share. The systems we exist within shape us as much as we shape them.
As the reality of the field of relatedness opens in our experience, we find ourselves floating in a constantly shifting sea of interpenetrating systems, and we begin to see that the potential of the field can be optimized. In the Evolutionary Collective we aspire to operate in this new experience of reality by optimizing the power of the field of relatedness between us.