Group Ascension

HOW FLOWER CHILDREN CHANGED THE WORLD

Introduction 

During the 1960s, assisted by some very good rock-n-roll, general social interaction mellowed considerably, and became more open and trusting. It seemed that people and society were both improving, and both actually nurturing each other. A personal and social transformation was taking place across a whole younger generation. 

Individually, as well as together in groups, many young people had realised that established mainstream thinking, although improving, was still much too conservative, and far too wedded to past fears, from the cumulative effects of the great depression and two world wars, to be able to optimistically embrace the future. For genuine improvements to occur, they themselves would have to become the change agents. Many embrace this challenge with optimism and gusto. 

The emergence of Flower Children in 1967 may have been the most significant event in western civilisation in the last two thousand years. The “Human Be In” or “Gathering of the Tribes” in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, January 1967, marked the initiation into a higher state of consciousness by many young people. This emergence of mass Ascension, unknown in human history, heralded the beginning of the Aquarian age of Peace and Love, and the Golden Age of Planetary Ascension.

The elevation of consciousness put many youth and young adults a quantum leap ahead of the society that grew them up and educated them. As is well known, the effect produced many positive reforms towards a more open, humane society. Not so well known, but even more importantly, it also gave rise to the quest for, the exploration of, and the commitment to healthier, more nourishing, nurturing and sustainable ways of living, individually, and collectively, that by today’s mainstream standards, still seem like a huge leap into an amazing, benign future.

 At the time, media attention towards the younger generation remained obsessed with superficialities, such as long hair, trendy fashions and fads, and freer sexuality, while remaining derisory, even antagonistic towards examples of genuine progress, each and all of which had to be peacefully and patiently fought for, often in the face of law-enforced, violent opposition, the control arm of political opposition. Many participants in this grand and deeper adventure could discern the game, and clearly saw the wisdom of not drawing attention to themselves, or announcing their advanced discoveries to a world still wracked by fear and uncertainty, and constrained by conformity and compliance.

Consequently, much of this more sublime activity remained unannounced, unknown and invisible to mainstream media, and by extension, the general mainstream population. This allowed much experimentation, distillation and refinement without intrusion or detraction. Many of the more positive findings have yet to be integrated into mainstream understanding, which has always had difficulty accepting the best of anything.

 Today, we are on the brink of a global breakout of elevated consciousness world-wide, known as Global Ascension. The pieces are already in place, and the effect will be as rapid, only world-wide. In preparation for this unique, unprecedented event, this book explores in some detail the lead up to what is today known as planet Earth’s first Group-Ascension event, and the nature of the elevated consciousness that emerged in those people.

 

Joyous Exuberance

From Delinquents to Flower Children

Music, chanting, singing and dance has always been recognised and used by religions all over the world as a means of lifting the spirit. For more than two decades, the best of rock-n-roll provided a similar function to the youth of the day, with unprecedented outcomes.

 Emergence of Rock-n-Roll

In the early fifties, teenagers were typically being labelled “bodgies”, “woodgies”, “teddyboys”, “hooligans” and “juvenile delinquents”. They had generally been born in the 1930s depression years, and had spent their childhood during the war. Around 1956, rock-n-roll burst onto the airwaves. At its very beginning, rock-n-roll grabbed hold of the youth of the day, who responded to the music’s immediacy and emotional vibrancy, and instantly breathed a new life into these alienated, emotionally-starved youth and young adults.

Rock-n-roll owed much of its origins to the blues music of previous years, country music, folk music, and to a wave of more joyful African-American gospel music, most of which was not welcome on racially white US radio stations. Many of the early rock-n-roll songs were no more than ‘white’ cover versions of banned ‘black’ music. Elvis Presley, who epitomised and thrust the new music genre into to mainstream public arena, had borrowed much from the African-American blues music.

Being brand new, and disparaged in the early years by most of the music industry, rock-n-roll was substantially left alone to find its own level and earn its own way. Many bands wrote and produced their own songs with very little outside influence. Record company standover and moulding was far less, so the music was often a close expression to the feelings of the youth of the day – energetic, lively, optimistic, joyful and fresh – joyous exuberance.

 Emotional Healing

Rock-n-roll differed from the blues, in that it was buoyant, even effervescent, and the lyrics positive. The focus was often romantic, emotional love, and not the emotionally devoid, physical sexuality that, with much corporate backing and promotion, has taken over youth music today. Even when the lyrics were about emotional heartbreak, the song was about passing through it, free of bitterness, hatred, revenge and the like. And it was always sung in a positive way, without the sentimentality or broken-hearted voice that is such a trademark of country music. It seemed to indicate a healthy way of resolving emotional upset and upheaval by remaining open hearted, and it provided inspiring music to facilitate emotional healing.

 By 1960, the two stand-out contributors had been removed from the scene – Elvis by Army call-up into Germany; and Buddy Holly in a plane crash. This signalled one era of rock and roll had completed its essential work, and was making way for another, which was about to begin.  The age of the super-group was about to arise. The Beatles quickly became the standout band, more than filling any sense of void. 

 Futuristic Synergies

In the early 1960s, two emerging giants of rock-n-roll, the Beatles and Bob Dylan, met and had an extraordinary and far reaching exchange. The Beatles got Dylan interested in the electric guitar and breaking out of the folk mould, and Dylan influenced the Beatles to move beyond romantic love into something more significant and socially meaningful. Dylan gave rock-n-roll a social conscience and he became for a time, a singing prophet of cultural change, while the Beatles linked rock-n-roll to love of humanity and planetary peace, inner peace and meditation, and inspired a young generation towards thinking about and looking for peaceful solutions. 

 Overcoming Racism

Even from the beginning, rock-n-roll music was always above racism and gender discrimination, as were their listeners. African-American women were always a major part of the music, despite having problems getting over both record company and radio station barriers, until the Motown label was formed and delivered an overwhelming number of irrepressible, African-American top hits. This played a major role in reducing racism in mainstream American society.

Personal Transformation

The best of rock-n-roll was ecstatic, uninhibiting, inspiring and emotionally uplifting. As the 1960s progressed, the ecstatic, emotional hysteria and release that was such a feature of live concerts beginning with Elvis and probably culminating with the early Beatles, began to diminish, as fans became more centered and calm. Rock-n-rollers were learning to become centered in their own peaceful, inner space, without either ‘buying into’ or ‘reacting against’ what was going on around them. Instead, rock-n-roll became more of a response, picking up an awakening generation, mellowing out the more radical, and enlivening the more timid and docile. And the best of rock-n-roll was becoming more and more aesthetic and uplifting and the lyrics more and more insightful and enlightening.   

 Protest Songs

Protest songs emerged to point out the harsh, staid, out-of-date and backward-looking aspects of society, which continued to keep it locked into the past, preventing it from enjoying the many insights, understandings and breakthroughs that were occurring, and which pointed towards a gentler, more caring society. Perhaps because of the potential for radio censorship, protest songs, despite the unpleasant nature of the subject, were still sung maintaining the same standards of music, without degenerating into abuse, sarcasm or accusation. Much of the protest songs were sung acoustically, as folk music. Many were inspiring and uplifting. In those days, all music had to sound nice to get an airing at all.   

Psychedelic Music

Emerging from a confluence of the peace movement and the civil rights movement, and buoyed by the wave of exquisite, inspiring rock-n-roll, flower children discovered an inner stillness that enabled them to see the underlying harmony beneath the outer discord. From this evolved psychedelic rock – aesthetic, flowing, swirling, multi-layered music that sometimes sounded like it was right inside ones head, and transcended many conventional limitations, with lyrics often focusing on peace and harmony between people, the underlying oneness that permeates all life, and the sheer joy of living.

 Social Evolution

Even as rock-n-roll facilitated inner psychological freedom, it indicated and advocated wholesome social directions. In little more than a decade, from healthy romantic love, rock-n-roll evolved and expanded to include love of humanity, the planet, and nature, and concern for human rights and justice, all sung without bitterness or self-righteousness. It brought a generation of youth and emerging adults to an awareness of social justice as well as the need for, and the possibility of peaceful planetary co-existence, all presented in buoyant, joyful, optimistic, hopeful, uplifting ways. The best of sixties rock was therapeutic, inspiring and uplifting.

 True Art

As with all true art, rock-n-roll was prophetic and inspirational, pointing to an understanding beyond what mainstream society could begin to envisage. From the mid 1950s through into the 1970s, rock-n-roll facilitated emotional healing, social upliftment and compassionate detachment from a society that, while improving and heading in the right general direction, was still extremely staid, intolerant, rigid, backward looking and highly conformist.

Looking to the Future

For more than two decades, rock-n-roll played a pivotal function in inspiring a generation of youth into becoming socially-aware, ecologically-concerned, planetary-conscious, peace-committed, critical-thinking, cooperatively-spirited individuals, who were able to envisage and advocate a better, more benevolent way of living, free from long existing and newly emerging social problems, which, if not corrected would eventually swamp the world.  The youth were leading us to the future.

 

Group Consciousness

When any group of people think and act together, some manner of group consciousness is formed. This can be a kind of group mind, as is created in schools and universities, and through TV news, where everybody is kept on the same page at the same time; or it can be group negative emotion as in mob-rule. For many, the group mind or emotion can predominate over individual consciousness, and collectively drag group members down into lower and false forms of consciousness, as in football hooliganism. 

 When people come together for a higher purpose, and work honestly, responsibly and with goodwill, they form a coherent group. At higher levels, a group soul forms, based upon the higher level energies manifested, and this group soul attracts higher-level, group energies. This has the capacity to uplift group members into higher and higher levels of consciousness and understanding.

Group Energies were first spoken about in the Rays and Initiations, the last of the Alice Bailey books, telepathically received in the late 1940s from Ascended Master Dwal Kuhl. The book was given as an unexpected bonus because of the spiritual progress made during WW2.  The book was published in 1960. Group energies are very potent, and are of a higher order than the long existing individual ray energies, which traditionally determine our soul and personality vibration, etc, for each incarnation, and which the ascended masters function on, work from and act through.

The early effects of group energies upon the war-born generation, was to stimulate their sense of freedom and personal sovereignty like no other generation in recorded history. Their parents were too staid, too predictable, too straight, and follow in their footsteps would be unbearably boring. Then, in the mid 1950s, came rock-n-roll.

Before rock-n-roll, all children and youth followed in their parents footsteps, singing their parents’ songs, that were in the main recorded by their parents generation. Rock-n-roll was young peoples’ music, written and sung by young people for young people about the things that mattered to young people. And what mattered most in the 1950s was romantic love, and getting over the often subsequent emotional heartbreak.

 The Beatles

Then came the 1960s, and with the 1960s came the Beatles. The Beatles shot to stardom as the first, and greatest planetary super-group following the release of a series of hits about unabashed, open-hearted, full-blown love. The effect of this was immediate, world-wide and colossal. An unprecedented number of #1 hits cemented the importance of love, and its overwhelming irrepressible interest by the majority of children, teenagers and young adults. This took the youth of the Western world by storm, and a wave of open-hearted love engulfed the planet, added to by other singers and groups, and remained so throughout the decade and well into the 1970s. An era of love and optimism swept the Western world, and the sixties became a period of unbridled optimism and goodwill. The youth were remaking the world. 

They were a stunningly progressive group, so experimental in their music that each new album was different from the last, and you never knew what to expect next. Their lyrics and lives progressed from romantic love to mature love, to psychedelia, to meditation and Eastern consciousness, to social concern, ending the war and implementing world peace, to emotional healing.

The Beatles were very early adopters of newly-discovered, breakthrough areas of consciousness, and were able to dissolve barriers in each area on behalf of their followers, so that these very and important aspects of consciousness were no longer so strange and mysterious, and something to be feared and avoided. As a result, many of the younger generation felt less insecure regarding unexplored areas of consciousness, and more free to explore these and other areas of consciousness upliftment. The outcome of this was a revolution in consciousness that continues to progress and break new ground, even today.

 

Healthy Person Psychology

During the 1950s, consistent with other improvements to society, new forms of psychotherapy were being discovered and refined, based upon observations of positive outcomes that were way ahead of the best theories of the day. The search for better models led to huge advances in psychology through observing and describing the blossoming of the human potential, and leading to the emergence of a new, positive, growth orientated field of psychology, reflecting human health, wellbeing and greater functionality, and variously called full-humaneness, transpersonal, third force, human potential, etc. The term ‘humanistic’ gained common usage.

Compliance of the individual to conventional social norms ceased to be the measuring stick of therapeutic success. Instead, the integrity of the individual, and realising or actualising the human potential was emerging to become of paramount importance. The slow, torturous, multi-year treatment process of psychoanalysis gave way to increasingly easeful, simpler, more direct  and more rapid healing, through assuming the fundamental integrity of the client, working in a more immediate, gentle and caring way, and trusting the client to move in a healthy direction.

 Psychological Health

Abraham Maslow, Chair of Psychology, Brandies University, made a study of healthy people, including many of his students, and in 1962 published “Towards a Psychology of Being”, based on extensive studies during the 1950s, which concluded that:

 “Man demonstrates in his own nature a pressure toward fuller and fuller Being, more and more perfect actualisation of his humaneness. Creativeness, spontaneity, self-hood, authenticity, caring for others, being able to love, and yearning for truth are embryonic potentialities belonging to his species.

 “No psychological growth is possible unless this essential core of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by himself.

 “Only healthy persons uniformly yearn for what is good for them and for others, and then are able wholeheartedly to enjoy of it and approve of it. For such people virtue is its own reward in the sense of being enjoyed in itself. They spontaneously tend to do right because that is what they want to do, what they need to do, what they enjoy, what they approve of doing, and what they will continue to enjoy. 

Client Centred Therapy 

Carl Rogers, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Wisconsin, and counselling therapist, discovered that many of his clients displayed remarkably benign natures, as they healed. He described the “fully-functioning person”:

 An Internal Locus of Evaluation

“The individual increasingly comes to feel that the source or locus of choices and decisions, or evaluative judgements lies within himself. Less and less does he look to others for approval or disapproval; for standards to live by; for decisions and choices. He recognises that it rests within himself to choose; that the only question that matters is “Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?”. This I think is perhaps the most important question for the creative individual.”

The Process of Functioning More Fully

 “The person who is psychologically free moves in the direction of becoming a more fully functioning person. He makes increasing use of all of his organic equipment to sense the existential situation within and without, recognising that his total organism is often wiser than his awareness.  He discovers that he is soundly and realistically social; he lives more completely this moment, but learns that this is the soundest living for all time.”

Basic Trustworthiness of Human Nature

“The basic nature of the human being, when functioning freely, is constructive and trustworthy. His reactions may be trusted to be positive, forward-looking, and constructive. He becomes more realistically socialised. His total behaviour will be more balanced and realistic, which is appropriate to the survival and enhancement of a highly social animal. Such a person’s behaviour is exquisitely rational, moving with subtle and ordered complexity toward the goals his organism is endeavouring to achieve – in such a fashion as to live in increasing harmony with himself and with others.” 

 Greater Richness of Life

“This process of living the good life involves a wider range, a greater richness, than the constricted living in which most of us find ourselves. One is involved in the satisfying experience of a more sensitive living, with greater range, greater variety, greater richness, because they have this underlying confidence in themselves as trustworthy instruments for encountering life. Such a life is enriching, exiting, rewarding, challenging, and meaningful. The good life is not for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of ones potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exiting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.” 

 Gestalt Therapy

Fritz Perls was the originator of Gestalt Therapy, which was developed during the 1950s, and flourished and rose to prominence during the 1960s. As a therapy, it assisted individuals to have rapid breakthroughs out of old, dysfunctional patterns into a freer, higher level of being and functioning:

 “Every individual, every plant, every animal has only one inborn goal – to actualise itself, as it is. Maturing is the transcendence from outside support to self-support. The average person in our time lives at only 5% – 15% of his potential at the highest. So 85% – 95% of our potential is unused, not at our disposal. And the reason for this is simple: we live in clichés and patterned behaviour.”

 “The aim of therapy is to help the patient not depend upon others, but to discover, from the very first moment that he can do many things, much more that he thinks he can do. We do this by finding the impasse, where a person is in avoidance and cannot mobilise his own inner support. Nobody really wants to get through the impasse that will grant this development. They would rather maintain the status quo, remain mediocre, and manipulate others for support.” 

 “If we understand the impasse correctly, we wake up. It’s the awareness, the full awareness of how you are stuck that makes you recover, and realise the whole thing is just a nightmare, not a real thing, not reality.”

Therapy had morphed from refitting a person back into a far-from-perfect, rigid society, to enabling a person to become integrated and inwardly free, and outwardly a highly functional and altogether greater being, able to transcend inhibiting societal limitations and constraints.

These major new psychologies and therapies all had their formation and testing during the 1950s, by leading thinkers and practitioners. They flourished during the 1960s, and gave rise to many variations, catering to every niche and nuance of personal dysfunction.  By the early 1970s, they became popular for safe, self-healing, and had collectively risen to pre-eminence over behavioural and psychoanalytical schools of thought.

 

Psychedelia

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

LSD Therapy

The leading therapeutic drug by the end of the 1950s was LSD. It was a natural substance growing on rye mould and discovered, somewhat inadvertently, in 1943, when some had entered the skin pores of a Swiss scientist, who unexpectedly experienced the world’s first “trip” as he bicycled home from work. It was trialed and rejected by the military as being useless for brainwashing or as a truth drug, or as a weapon, and by psychiatry as unhelpful for psychotics. Eventually it was used with great success by the newly emerging holistic therapeutic fraternity, principally as a means to cure alcoholism, heal marital breakdown, and to enable the terminally ill to reconcile to dying and lose their dread of impending death. 

Treatment was often a single dose in a particular comfortable and aesthetic setting, leaving the person or the couple alone to enjoy themselves, and come to terms with their situation. During that 6-8 hour period of elevated consciousness and heightened emotional sensitivity, many hitherto overwhelming problems were able to be understood, accepted, assimilated, integrated and transcended virtually as one multi-dimensional experience, enabling the once-was sufferer to embrace and enjoy a new level of personal acceptance, forgiveness of others, compassionate wisdom, and inner peace.

Continuous use of LSD causes loss of discernable effects after only a few days, making it technically anti-addictive – you have to come right down before you will be able go up again. During this period of therapeutic use, LSD was regarded as a miracle drug, and at the time made significant contributions to the more general understanding of a more sensitive, enlightened, compassionate inner nature.

LSD became illegal after its popularity spread from the therapeutic community to non-medical circles by already healthy people, especially the youth, as a self-administered means of successfully entering mystical states of consciousness.

 Higher Consciousness

Following the success of LSD in therapy in the late 1950s and early 1960s, several immanent persons who were already studying higher states of consciousness, began ingesting LSD, mescalin, etc to study the effects on themselves. This small group included Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzler, etc. Their experiences were impressive and noteworthy and the response from readers was widespread and enthusiastic. Many saw psychedelics as a key to unlock doors to Higher Consciousness, and psychedelics became, for a while the widespread instrument of choice amongst an already freer and less inhibited younger generation to enter heightened states of consciousness, to be later superseded by meditation as a self-induced method, during the 1970s.  

Flower Children

Flower Children used LSD in an altogether higher manner than the therapeutic approach. Already free from serious psychological problems to deal with, and having high expectations of a better world, LSD was used for more creative, visionary, insightful purposes. Usage at the time was generally restricted to special occasions, at appropriate times, in ceremonial settings, usually only after much consideration. It was not unusual afterwards, for a person to spend several months in reflection and contemplation, processing and assimilating the immense understandings released, as they went about their normal lives, but in a wiser, more thoughtful and considerate, more insightful and perhaps light-hearted and humorous way.

 

Flower Children

Climaxing Achievement of Western Civilisation

Flower children, as they called themselves, seem to have arisen out of the confluence of the civil rights and peace movements, as constructive responses to racism and war, with generous helpings of folk, folk-rock and psychedelic music. More directly, they manifested through an open-minded and open hearted ferment in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco in the mid 1960s, where young people were exploring ideas of open society, simpler living, quality time, self-sufficiency, future possibilities etc. This ideas exploration was accompanied by strong feelings for nature and natural beauty, sensitivity and emotional openness, deep interpersonal trust and living amongst trusting friends. The mental and emotional openness was much helped along by the recreation of rock-n-roll into folk, folk-rock and psychedelic genres.

The flower children were a step beyond the angst of the somewhat withdrawn, dark-clothed, poetry-reading beat generation of a few years earlier, who were born mainly during the 1930s depression years, and who spent their childhood during WW2, were the teenage-angst generation, epitomised by James Dean, and were disparagingly referred to as juvenile delinquents. Flower children were essentially born in the 1940s, grew up on rock-n-roll, danced to a different drum, and were happy to experience a generation gap from their staid, conventional parents. They had their heart charkas opened in the rock-n-roll love revolution of the 1960s. 

As true, groundbreaking phenomenon, flower children manifested between the years around 1965-70 and first came into mainstream awareness at the ‘human be-in’ or ‘gathering of the tribes’ in San Francisco Park, early 1967, when more than 20,000 such people discovered they all felt the same way, and were on the same wavelength. This became a spontaneous rapidly growing movement, and by the ‘summer of love’ some six months later, had already swollen to several hundred thousands, which inundated the city. This helped to induce many of the more seriously committed to walk the talk and go bush, and practise the commonly held, inspiring vision.

 As individuals, they were able to enjoy whatever they found to be uplifting, drawing from the best in many paths and traditions and could experience them all as being compatible and complementary. And yet they had their own understandings and were captive of no one, not even each other, nor any teaching. They eschewed all forms of violence, and advocated creating a peaceful and harmonious world by using peaceful and harmonious means. They had no power structures, no set teachings, no leaders, gurus, figureheads or spokespersons.

 Natural Family Living

They found it easy to offer all women, all children, and all peoples of all ages and all races equal respect, dignity and caring. They treasured children, and many practiced natural childbirth. The men were very involved with child rearing via gentleness, affection, empathy and respect, rather than restrictions and discipline. They found much value in traditional indigenous peoples and their teachings, and like them, experienced oneness with nature before almost anybody understood ecology. Being already emancipated, the women avoided lipstick, makeup, high-heels, tight skirts, short skirts, plunging necklines, and all other forms of sexual accoutrements that were catching on in much of mainstream society. 

Life-Affirming Lifestyle

As a group, flower children were able to attune to, embrace, and enjoy fully wholistic and wholesome approaches to life that was unheard of at the time, and unimaginable to most people.  These approaches to life include:

• ·a feeling for, and appreciation of nature, including adopting a natural, whole food diet, wearing natural clothing and living as natural, intelligent, biological beings;
•  ·a sense of the cooperative and harmonious basis of all life, and of peaceful benevolence as a means to solving all problems, great and small, near and far; 
• ·an experience of themselves as truly planetary citizens, beyond all nationalistic, ethnic, racial or religious barriers and constraints;  
• a realisation of the immediacy of spirituality in everyday life, and being inspired by many spiritual traditions simultaneously, without any sense of conflict, including Zen, Sufism, yoga, mystical Christianity and various forms of traditional shamanism.

Flower Children were truly global citizens, concerned with world peace and harmony, and functioning as non-disrupting initiators, by choosing gentleness over violent confrontation as a means to promote societal transformation. They functioned very much in the background, leading from behind, embracing advanced understandings and life-affirming lifestyles that transcended the more uptight, staid and competitive ways of conventional mainstream living. 

Communal Living

They successfully experimented with cooperative ways of living, including extended family groups, communal and tribal living, and discovered that they were able to live effortlessly, harmlessly, harmoniously and enjoyably, with few possessions, limited personal space and minimal privacy, as all participants treated each other with openness, gentleness, cooperation, honesty, love and trust. 

They used few guidebooks, as it was such a new, ground-breaking way of living, without structures or leaders, by simply relying on the quality of relating, which they found natural, simple and effortless, reflecting, somewhat a childhood and adolescence sufficiently free of trauma, a belief in themselves, and a clear sense of how wonderful the future could be. This small and brief experiment broke huge ground as a living demonstration that true, natural, human nature is really a lot better than our education an even our upbringing had taught us, and that cooperative, uplifting, living arrangements were entirely possible, enjoyable, easy and economically advantageous. 

Contributions to Sustainable communities

By creating and living in self-sufficient communes, they made one of their great contributions to our planetary future, as groundbreaking forerunners to wholistic, life-affirming, fully-designed sustainable communities. By living effortlessly, self-sufficiently, communally and in harmony with nature, they demonstrated what had never before been achieved in Western civilisation, and which people thought only traditional indigenous people were capable of doing. They broke the mould by demonstrating the cooperative, benevolent nature of people, and this enabled many others to understand that they would be able to live in cooperative and trusting, sustainable communities. 

Successful sustainable living is about getting the all of the basic essentials right first. This is also called sustainable subsistence living, and contrasts with mainstream living today, where people seek entertainment and luxuries, but without having the crucial, basic essentials of good food, clean water, plentiful, affordable sensible housing, robust health, good education etc. When the basics are right, people feel fulfilled and tend not to bother with entertainment or luxuries, as amply demonstrated by the flower children. 

They were followed by early pioneers in the 1970s, creating the first wave of pioneering sustainable communities and eventually in the 1980s professionally designed sustainable communities were created. Following decades saw additional, natural-based technologies, and further refinements in the form of specific sustainable templates, such as Co-housing, Eco-villages, Permaculture villages, etc. 

Psychedelia

They avoided the emotionally numbing, conscience dissolving, addictive, hard drugs that have become so problematic today. Instead choosing the psychedelic range of ingestives to enhance mind and mood access, the most commonly used being marihuana and LSD, each of which had at some time occupied a highly respected place in advanced parts of mainstream society.

Flower children regarded psychedelics as sacred substances to be treated with respect, and used them as sacraments, intuitively understanding that they fell within the less-is-more category. Marihuana was usually ingested in ceremonial settings. Habituating to marihuana was regarded as producing a less profound and less aesthetic effect with over-relaxing side effects, making it less enhancing of ones life.

Flower Children used LSD used for creative, visionary and insightful purposes, beyond improving visualisation. It was not unusual afterwards, for a person to spend several months in reflection and contemplation, processing and assimilating the immense understandings released, as they went about their normal lives, but in a wiser, more thoughtful and considerate, more insightful, light-hearted and humorous way. 

Contributions to Greater Society

Flower children were our first group of natural planetary citizens, and proved to be true visionaries in ways that are only now beginning to be understood and appreciated. They predicted the now-current suite of global problems including pollution, ecological destruction, societal breakdown, wars and increased authoritarian control, if human societies did not lift their game, address the problems and move towards a world of peace and love, goodwill and trust, through:

•  better, healthier, simpler, easier, creative ways of living;
• by applying one’s own understanding, in cooperative, trusting, unstructured ways;
• for immediate and long-term results at grass-roots level;
• so that everybody, the environment and the whole world is bettered. 

Flower children taught us that being natural was completely valid and enabled effortless living. They also taught us that nature itself is nurturing, and works in cooperative harmony with whoever would work in cooperative harmony with it. Their legacy was to spearhead what has now become the practice of wholesome, creative, unproblematic, inexpensive, sustainable, pollution-free ways of living.

 Whole-Brain, Emotionally-Open, Self-Actualisers

Flower children were spontaneous, peak-experiencing, visionary, emotionally open, whole-brain self-actualisers, who, by demonstrating simple and natural communal living, in simple, ordinary, gentle ways, made future sustainable community living understandable and more accessible to people in the broader, mainstream population, many of whom later become sustainable community developers. They were great social pioneers, and in many ways are still ahead of the current times.

 Opening one’s heat chakra is the single most important thing anybody can do in their lifetime. The heart is the gateway to higher consciousness, or more accurately, our true consciousness that we lost when we closed our heart charka to avoid feeling emotional pain, after being heart-broken. 

By 1970, post Woodstock, the essential lessons had been effortlessly mastered and well understood by the flower children. They had succeeded superbly and had created a comprehensive multi-skilled template for the future. The next step was beckoning, which was in the main to work towards the Aquarian age more broadly, including within mainstream. Others amongst them would develop self-sufficient communes into the next step of sustainable, intentional communities, while yet others would pursue higher consciousness itself in far greater depth.

 With exquisite timing, and to the general agreement and applause of his friends, Scott Mckenzie: San Francisco: Wear some Flowers in Your Hair, cut his long hair short and declared that flower power was over. Group energies had been invoked, accepted, utilised and permanently anchored on the planet, and the next step in conscious evolution was about to begin, with the inflow of Eastern Consciousness teachings and practices.  

Astrology

They had chosen, as a group, to undergo a surface incarnation at the perfect time, with Uranus and Neptune in trine, and both sextile to Pluto. Their work, when still babies and infants, was to increase Light in the world during the war against extreme evil, then later take the lead and peacefully oppose the Vietnam War. 

Their beneficent astrological birth configuration came into full expression during 1965-70, when Uranus conjuncted Pluto, with both sextiling Neptune. This enabled them to safely assist their own ascension process, using psychedelics and empathic group guidance. After already opening their Heart Chakras through open-hearted rock-n-roll, they floated off the illusionary matrix through LSD. Turn on to the psychedelics, tune in to ascended consciousness, drop out of the matrix.

 Group Ascenders

Group Ascension is facilitated by participants who connect and work as responsible, coherent groups. This invokes Group Energies, and empowers a higher-level emerging Group Soul that uplifts them, as a group. Flower children exceeded and transcended these conditions by joining voluntarily, ecstatically, for the highest of purposes, and working harmoniously, effortlessly, joyously.

Flower Children were the first group-ascended 4D consciousness people. Advanced Lightworkers, in today’s terminology, and with a broad spiritual appreciation, they were able to create and live self-sufficiently in communes, in effortless harmony. By breaking with tradition and challenging many emotional and mental taboos for an entire population, they helped make the world ready for future Global Ascension, by creating templates for their own and future generations, demonstrating that Aquarian group energies were already fully alive in them.

 After already opening their Heart Chakras through open-hearted rock-n-roll, they floated off the illusionary matrix through LSD. Turn on to the psychedelics, tune in to ascended consciousness, drop out of the matrix.

Subsequent experiences of following generations has shown that without the prior opening of the heart chakra, LSD and Ecstasy did not enable access to ascended consciousness, although the effects could still be highly pleasant and entertaining allowing temporary relief from the subconscious memory of emotional pain and fear of rejection and hurt.  

 Aquarian Age

The flower children spoke of the incoming Aquarian age of planetary peace, co-operation and abundance, which generally know today as Planetary and Biological Ascension. It would be characterised by the transition from closed-minded religion to open-hearted spirituality, where each person has a direct connection with the creator, which can be found within, and each is always individually responsible for their own spiritual wellbeing and evolution, including choosing which practices to undertake.

 They then providing a living example of functional communal living, then opening bulk food stores, alternative bookshops, healing centres, etc, as an early revealing of a higher, 4^th dimensional paradigm. They successfully manifested an enlightened, self-contained 4D society, within the mainstream, unenlightened 3D matrix society.  Flower children spoke openly of the upcoming Aquarian Age, today known as Planetary Ascension, and did an incredibly good job of demonstrating an early manifestation, in the face of difficult, adverse circumstances, including extreme adverse publicity, and serious undermining by many mainstream authorities. 

They informed us that it could unfold gracefully, (the singing and dancing option); or else it would be resisted and manifest through suffering, (the kicking and screaming option). But one way or the other, it would happen in the very near future. 

As a cosmic event, we now know the Aquarian age to be a state of consciousness far beyond that of the Piscean age, as organised religion gives way to individual spirituality, outer authority gives way to inner knowing, and devotion to an external God becomes oneness with the God within.

 Flower Children created timelines for a 4D Aquarian future through:

• a love of nature, and of all things natural, and in particular the flower kingdom;
• familiarity, comfort and ease at living close to nature; 
• gentleness, caring and love of children;
• ability to transcend family upbringing and conventional education, remaining undamaged;
• ability to tune into a higher reality, and envision a positive, high-level future;
• ability to create and live in highly successful, self-sufficient city, rural and remote communes;
• living a joyous, futuristic existence effortlessly.

 Wayshowers for Advanced Spiritual Teachings

Flower Children demonstrated enlightenment and prepared the way for an influx of Eastern teachings during the 1970s, which taught people about spiritual disciplines, meditation, enlightenment, and the part that auras, chakras and kundalini play in attaining higher levels of consciousness.

Spiritual development and the ability to meditate, as taught by Eastern teachers, enabled many people to progress and take the next step around the 1980s, and begin working consciously with their spirit guides. We all have spiritual guides assigned to each of us. Their influence is subtle and requires we be sensitive to promptings from within. Spirit guides have given out a gentler, more subtle and nuanced, higher-level teaching to emerge, that has enabled people to have intimate contact with Creator God, and with those greater Souls who work from higher levels to further the Divine Plan of upliftment of all beings, and the cosmic unfoldment of everything.

 Global Elite or illusionati

Many people of the 60s and 70’s had explored debt-free, sound, sensible sustainable solutions, and as low-consumption, sustainable communities succeeded and numbers began flourishing, and began permeating mainstream. This went much against the grain of corporations who bridled at the reduced consumption by many young people, who were potentially their greatest cunsumers. The global elite of banksters feared this movement would grow and spread to challenge, and eventually undermine their debt-based, economic and financial control, through the reduction of consumption.

 The global elite rejected the singing and dancing option, and sought to implement their own, elitist NWO, using the kicking and screaming alternative. To ensure greater control, the global elite changed the economics in the English-speaking countries, from where most flower children emerged, back to the regressive economics of competition, scarcity and debt, in a wild reprise of the crazy 1920s. This was achieved through enforcing the same regressive, cut-throat, market-place economics that set up the stock-market collapse and great depression in the 1930s.

 

Self-Actualisation

Ascension Consciousness in the 1960s

Self-actualisation, or higher human functioning, was first noticed in the 1950s, in rare and exceptional individuals. It blossomed during the 1960s, and flourished the Flower Children, leading to a new appreciation of life, a questioning of the status quo, and an urge towards better ways of living.

 Maslow studied healthy people and discovered that healthy individuals are motivated toward what he termed self-actualisation, and noted that self-actualising people had striking similar characteristics. He described self-actualisation as when:

 “…the powers of the person come together in a particularly and intensely enjoyable way, and in which he is more integrated and less split, more open for experience, more idiosyncratic, more perfectly expressive or spontaneous, or fully functioning, more creative, more humorous more ego-transcending, more independent of his lower needs, etc. He becomes in these episodes more truly himself, more perfectly actualising his potentialities, closer to the core of his being, more fully human. Not only are these his happiest and most thrilling moments, but they are also moments of greatest maturity, individuation, fulfilment – in a word, his healthiest moments.

“Self-actualising people, those who have come to a high level of maturation, health and self-fulfilment, have so much to teach us that sometimes they seem almost like a different breed of human beings.”

 The following descriptions have been compiled from the writings of Maslow and others.

1. Clearer perception of reality

Self-actualising people perceive reality more effectively than others and are more comfortable with it. They have an accurate perception of what exists rather than a distortion of perception by one’s needs, and possess an ability to be objective about their own strengths, possibilities and limitations. They judge experiences, people and things correctly and efficiently, and have an unusual ability to detect the spurious, the fake and the dishonest. They are not afraid of the unknown and can tolerate the doubt, uncertainty, and tentativeness accompanying the perception of the new and unfamiliar.

2. Acceptance of self, others, and nature.

Self-actualizing persons are not ashamed or guilty about their human nature, with its shortcoming, imperfections, frailties, and weaknesses. They can accept their own human shortcomings, without condemnation. Nor are they critical of these aspects of other people. They respect and esteem themselves and others. Moreover, they are honest, open, genuine, without pose or facade. They are not self-satisfied but are concerned about discrepancies between what is and what might be or should be in themselves, others, and society.

 3. Spontaneity.

Self-actualising people are relatively spontaneous in their behaviour, and far more spontaneous than that in their inner life, thoughts and impulses Self-actualizing persons are not hampered by convention, but they do not flout it. They are not conformists, but neither are they anti-conformist for the sake of being so. They might act conventionally, but they seldom allow convention to keep them from doing anything they consider important or basic. They are not externally motivated or even goal-directed; rather their motivation is the internal one of growth and development, the actualization of themselves and their potentialities.

4. Problem-centering.

Self-actualising people have a problem-solving orientation towards life instead of an orientation centered on self. They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in their lives. They commonly have a mission in life, some problem outside themselves that enlists much of their energies. In general this mission is unselfish and is involved with the philosophical and the ethical.

5. Autonomy, independent of culture and environment.

Self-actualizing persons are not dependent for their main satisfactions on other people or culture or means-to-ends, or in general, on extrinsic satisfactions. Rather they are dependent for their own development and continued growth upon their own potentialities and latent resources. The meaning of their life is self-decision, self-governing and being an active, responsible, self-disciplined deciding person rather than a pawn or a person helplessly ruled by others. 

6. Detachment and the need for solitude

Self-actualising people enjoy solitude and privacy. It is often possible for them to remain above the battle, unruffled and undisturbed by that which upsets others. They may even appear to be asocial. It is perhaps, related to an abiding sense of security and self-sufficiency.

 7. Continued freshness of appreciation.

Self-actualising people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again the basic pleasures of life. They experience awe, pleasure, and wonder in their everyday world, such as nature, children, music and sexual experience. They approach these basic experiences with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.

 8. The mystic experience, the oceanic feeling.

Self-actualising people commonly have mystic or `peak’ experiences or times of intense emotions in which they transcend self. During a peak experience, they experience feelings of ecstasy, awe, and wonder with feelings of limitless horizons opening up, feelings of unlimited power and at the same time feelings of being more helpless than ever before. The experience ends with the conviction that something extremely important and valuable has happened so that the person is to some extent transformed and strengthened by the experience that has a carry-over into everyday life.

 9. Oneness with humanity.

Self-actualising people have deep feelings of identification, sympathy and affection for other people, and a deep feeling of empathy and compassion for human beings in general. This feeling is, in a sense, unconditional in that it exists along with the recognition of the existence in others of negative qualities that may provoke occasional anger, impatience, and disgust.

 10. Deep interpersonal relations.

Self-actualising people have deeper and more profound inter-personal relationships than most adults, but not necessarily deeper than children. They are capable of more closeness, greater love, more perfect identification, more erasing of ego boundaries than other people would consider possible. One consequence is that self-actualised people have especially deep ties with rather few individuals and their circle of friends is small. They tend to be kind or at least patient to almost everyone, yet they do speak realistically and harshly of those whom they feel deserve it, especially the hypocritical, pretentious, pompous or the self-inflated individual.

 11. Democratic character structure.

Self-actualising people are democratic in the deepest possible sense. They are friendly towards everyone regardless of class, education political beliefs, race or colour. They believe it is possible to learn something from everyone. They are humble in the sense of being aware of how little they know in comparison with what could be known and what is known by others. he is ready and willing to learn from anyone. He respects everyone as potential contributors to his knowledge, merely because they are human beings.

 12. Ethical means towards moral ends.

Self-actualizing persons are highly ethical. They clearly distinguish between means and ends and subordinate means to ends. Their notions of right and wrong and of good and evil are often not conventional ones.

13. Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor.

 Self-actualising people have a keen, unhostile sense of humour. They don’t laugh at jokes that hurt other people or are aimed at others inferiority. They can make fun of others in general, or of themselves, when they are foolish or try to be big when they are small. They are inclined towards thoughtful humour that elicits a smile, is intrinsic to the situation, and spontaneous.

14. Creativeness.

Self-actualising are highly imaginative and creative. The creativity involved here is not special-talent creativeness. It is a creativeness potentially inherent in everyone but usually suffocated by acculturation. It is a fresh, naive, direct way of looking at things, rather similar to the naive and universal creativeness of unspoiled children.

 Flower Children demonstrated mass self-actualisation when they group-ascended between 1967 and 1970, and set templates for the then future Aquarian age, that is today known as Global Ascension, and is currently underway.

 

Whole-Brain Functioning

When Two Hemispheres Become ONE   

Improved Social Consciousness

The generally enthusiastic, wholesome, optimistic thrust towards a better world by post-war societies through improving living conditions had raised the level of openness, trust, goodwill etc, amongst people, improving the quality of interpersonal relationships, and facilitating self-actualisation amongst those many participating in the new personal and social liberation. 

 Self-actualisation became an increasingly familiar experience of more and more people, in many sections of society. It was even more prevalent in universities and other places of higher learning and forward thinking included a significant number of people at the top of their fields, including an inordinate number of university professors who were breaking new ground as they explored the cutting edge. Some of these people’s outstanding contributions are utilised in this text.

 Self-actualisation involves bringing into fruition aspects of a person’s inner life not normally accessed, and enables a deeper appreciation and understanding of the human potential to emerge, including experiencing ‘left brain’ and ‘right brain’ functioning, as distinct and complimentary ways of relating to the world.

We each have two primary ways of understanding ourselves and comprehending the world around us. One is to do with our feelings; the other is to do with our thinking. We have:

• a feeling, sensing, adapting, relating function, that all people are born with, and use freely in their formative years. It is our primary way of relating, and forms the basis of our inner, personal reality, and our deeper, more meaningful relationships. This part most often becomes suppressed in western cultures.
•  A curious, questioning, understanding function. This has been hijacked and turned into a comparing, analysing, deducing, interpreting function, because that is of interest industry, so schools and other learning institutions train people obey orders and follow instructions, and thus be compatible with existing mainstream systems, methods and processes.

 As a form of symbolic shorthand, these have now become known as “right-brain” and “left-brain” functioning.

 Right-brain refers to the natural, sensing, feeling, empathic, intuitive, artistic, poetic, impulsive, open-hearted, “feeling mind”, that is in touch with the natural world, and is considered to take place predominantly in the right-hemisphere and as nerves cross over at the back of the neck, the left-side of the body.  It describes the traditional, indigenous approach to life that typifies their cultures around the world, and is represented by the arts in western cultures.

The right brain performs vital complementary and overseeing functions to left brain thinking, such scanning, linking, the capacity get feel and a grasp of something, and to a sense of proportion, and to be sensitive to nuances of meaning, etc. It is the primary, empathically responsive, flexible, sliding-scale, analogue, win/win, intuitive, feminine, cooperative, feeling ‘brain’, and is what the feeling part of the person connects to.

Left-brain refers to the logical, sequential, deductive, reductionist, analytical “thinking mind”, that is considered to take place, predominantly in the left hemisphere, and the right side of the body. It forms the western intellectual, scientific, rational, materialistic tradition. It is the secondary, rigid, inflexible, all-or-nothing, win/lose, digital, masculine, competitive, thinking ‘brain’.

 It became the overwhelmingly dominant paradigm with the event of the industrial revolution, when people were trained to be logical, methodological, reliable and predictable, to drive the engines of industry. It has been taught in classrooms ever since the industrial revolution. In most developed nations, the left-brain, logical, sequential mind has now come to dominate and even overwhelm and suppress almost all appearances of natural, spontaneous right-brain functioning, which are regarded as unpredictable, impulsive and disruptive of the methodological needs of modern commerce and industry.

Limitations of the Left-Brain Paradigm

On its own, and without right-brain input, the left-brain mind is logical, good at deductive reasoning, convergent thinking and specialised detail within clearly defined boundaries; but is also locked into the past, cannot see the forest for the trees, and unable to think outside of the box, to use some of its own clichés about itself.

The left brain also suffers from the ‘frog-in-the-saucepan’ syndrome, where it adapts to, identifies with, and can no longer discern important changes, either positive or negative, to the situation that it has become blinded to. The story of the Japanese soldier still doing sentry duty on an island many years after the war has ended, is a classic left brain issue and demonstrates how faulty or obsolete programs do not automatically extinguish. As a consequence left-brain tends to misperceive changing conditions as a continuation of the same. It is not connected to nature or one’s own inner nature, which is the right-brain’s highly important job; it always feels far too far from God, which is also the right brain’s province. It cannot handle cognitive dissonance, and tends to reject all that does not fit existing programs hardwired into memory, and then rationalises the decision. Taken together, it is comprehensively disconnected from the real reality.

The left brain cannot join the dots, whether between synchronous or disjointed events, or those spanning over time, and thus true causal links are unseen. Looking ahead becomes reduced to a linear extrapolation of more-of-the-same. Breaking new ground becomes slow, incremental, jerky, haphazard and torturous, and often only happens in a crisis, when there is no longer any choice.

 Enter Rock-n-Roll

Rock-n-roll began as powerfully, unabashed, and almost exclusively, joyful, right-brain, feeling music, unlike say, most classical and jazz, which typically have an overriding mental appeal, or are left-brain dominant. At its very beginning, rock-n-roll picked up the alienated youth of the day, who responded to the music’s immediacy and emotional vibrancy. Rock-n-roll instantly breathed a new life into many alienated, emotionally-starved youth and young adults.

As rock-n-roll went through its rapid growth and development period, it carried many of each succeeding sub-generation along with it, taking them through the progressive, expansive changes underway. In the space of little over ten years, rock-n-roll had come to play a major part in morphing many adolescents and young adults from delinquent gang members into gentle, sensitive and aware flower children, who clearly had both hemispheres actively communicating to each other. 

Whole-Brain Beginnings

Typically, many artists, poets and musicians find left-hemispheric, analytical thinking to be difficult. Some are able to function either way, but only one way at a time. Self-actualisers had discovered their creative, artistic, intuitive, emotionally intelligent, right-here right-now, right-hemisphere, and were finding the dominant paradigm of the day was hemming them in. Self-actualisers had somehow managed to master the linear, rational and logical thought processes, without suppressing their normal, right-brain functioning into subconsciousness, as commonly happens, and were able to apply insight and intuition to those thought processes, broadening, deepening and refining them, and using both hemispheres confluently, to manifest a coherent understanding and an illumined approach to life. Thinking in a completely new way. 

“Whole-brain” refers to the confluent, inter-active, integrated activity of both ways of hemispheres, which is relatively unknown in mainstream society. When confluence occurs, the experience can be that of satori, enlightenment, inspiration, illumination, self-actualisation, etc, giving the person inordinate acumen, perspicacity, acuity and wisdom. It could perhaps be termed “Spherical Consciousness”, in acknowledgement of conjoining two hemispheres. It is human fulfilment, how people are naturally, and how all human beings are supposed to develop.

 Catalytic Empathy

By the second half of the 1960s, significant and increasing numbers of people were having overwhelmingly positive, inner experiences of their own essential being, with its natural clarity and capacity for understanding, spontaneous love for all beings and compassionate concerns for all unnecessary suffering on the planet. All of this seemed to invoke a response from their own inner faculties, revealing higher-level insights about ways of living that are simple, elegant, wholesome and self-evident.

 In such a positive and creative social environment, self-actualisation was becoming more common and catalytic. People experienced themselves sparking positively off one another and entered states of co-operative empathy, or “contact highs”. What originated mainly on the west coast of USA, mid 1960s quickly arose in many other parts of the world – especially on the east coast of Australia, and in New Zealand, England, Germany and other parts of Europe.

Confluence and Coherence

Self-actualisers were finding that their natural self-awareness was naturally sorting their thinking processes, to become more tidy and orderly, and reconnecting in ways that gave sense and meaning to past events. Their natural enlightened minds began emerging through the confines of their school-trained linear minds, and shedding new understanding. They were becoming whole-brain confluent and coherent, spontaneously capable of inductive reasoning and parallel, lateral and divergent thinking, and were wide open to new ideas, novel viewpoints, insights, intuitions and inspirations. 

With the addition of their right-hemisphere, creative side enabling whole-brain confluence, they were also open to divergent and integrative thinking, novel and innovative cutting-edge ideas, capable of making broad sweeps, grasping complex interactions, integrating diverse ideas, joining the dots between synchronous events, bridging separate disciplines, seeing the larger picture, intuiting trends, envisaging creative ideas and conceiving integrated, multiple win-win solutions.

 Present Centeredness

People were discovering that the journey was ongoing, and actually the point, as it ensured growth, that getting there is done by being here now. Many were becoming naturally present-centred, with awareness and self-awareness replacing the usual pre-occupations and intrusive mental distractions. In place of compulsive thinking, or needing to ‘make up one’s mind’ people were finding they were now able to hold their mind in abeyance. Beliefs, which had been long-held in the subconscious as unquestionable, assumed truths, were loosening and surfacing into consciousness to become examinable working hypotheses, capable of being inspected and challenged from varying viewpoints and under differing parameters, and open to refinement and modification. Rigid minds were becoming malleable, amenable to experience and insight, and malleable minds were becoming holographic, able to glean patterns, trends and understandings from instances of life’s experiences.

 Subconscious Processes

Now people were finding themselves able to source from their own subconscious (an area previously feared, avoided, and even shunned, especially by westerners), a living, insightful wisdom, distilled from the essence of their life’s successes and failures. Mental perceptions were becoming clearer and sharper, and more nuanced.

 A natural harmony could be intuited as already existing behind an artificially created rigid order, imposed over what had been long misunderstood as primeval chaos. Life as naturally lived could be experienced as intrinsically purposeful and meaningful and made a whole lot of sense. Life was no longer chaotic, or some arbitrary, random happenstance that required us to control, manipulate and exploit.

Uniqueness

Those who were experiencing this new, more meaningful, more coherent, confluent reality, were also finding that their own unique appreciations and understandings were highly compatible with, and mutually enhancing of other’s unique understandings.  Where people had previously adopted conflicting views, they could now see complimentary shades of differences, pointing to a greater, richer, more complete and satisfying understanding.  

 They began to discover solutions to long-standing problems, and could see that it was possible to live without creating problems. They could see that everybody could live without having to exploiting one another, and it was completely possible to create planetary peace and harmony for everybody. 

 Creativity

There seemed to be a significant process occurring that enabled a person to be fully invested in the present moment, in a state of concurrent, multilevel awareness. Self-actualisers were experiencing themselves as being on the very cutting edge of a continuing, graceful, unfolding transition, as if an amazing and exiting future was actually coming to meet them, and unfolding in front of them. An optimistic, wholesome, wholistic, creative, forward-looking, possibilities-based solutions-orientated, imaginative envisaging was emerging, all the time overseen by a clear discernment. Creativity had taken on completely new meanings.

 Open-minded

Whole-brain people are open minded. They enjoy not forming beliefs in order to kill questioning, but holding the mind open and allowing more information to enter until a comprehensive understanding arises that answers all perspectives and is free of internal conflict. Open-minded people can function with ‘tentative, partial answers, that avoid hard beliefs.

 Awareness

The open mind does not resort to logical or sequential thinking. It abides in its natural awareness and self-awareness. Awareness is free from scepticism, gullibility, prejudice, or any other distorting factor. Self-awareness is free of self-criticism or self-rejection, or any other form of undermining negativity.

 Open-Hearted

The right-brain is naturally open-hearted, and open-hearted people are naturally right-brained. The open-heart is not defensive or protecting of its hurts. It is accepting and self-accepting. Acceptance is free from cynicism and fear of disappointment. Self-acceptance is free from self-pity, self-indulgence and emotional defensiveness.

 Unconditional Love

Whole Brain people are open hearted (right-brain) and open minded (left-brain). They are aware and accepting, self-aware and self-accepting. They are capable of  unconditional love for all beings.

 Ordinariness

Some people began experiencing their own inner creative nature without having realised that it had been there to discover, and when they did discover it, they then realised they had it had always been there all of the time. They had simply been tuned away from it and had not noticed it before.

 People were experiencing a way of being, living and relating that was natural, simple, easy, elegant and insightful. Applied to their profession or their work, many resolutions to constraining and limiting situations were becoming apparent, even obvious.

 

Whole-Brain, Life-Affirming Discoveries

The Future is Now 

Natural Creativity

Flower power, as the pinnacle expression of open-hearted and open-minded psychological freedom, infected and affected the world in a wholly positive way. The message of peace, love and brown rice (meaning a healthy diet), traveled around the world, and gave all ordinary people a feeling of acceptance, and self-acceptance, freeing the consciousness from its learned constraints. By the 1970s, many innovative, life-affirming, wholistic discoveries were emerging, contributing to a whole, new creative way of approaching and living life. Self-actualisers were experiencing a way of being and relating, that was simple, easy, elegant and insightful, which felt utterly ordinary and completely natural. Many could sense life as an intrinsic, already-existing, underlying natural harmony, and not some primordial chaos, as was commonly believed. Life, when naturally lived, was now experienced as intrinsically purposeful and meaningful, and no longer some arbitrary, random happenstance, which we needed to control and manipulate.

 An optimistic, wholesome, wholistic, creative, forward-looking, possibilities-based, solutions-orientated, imaginative, envisaging was emerging. Creativity had taken on new meanings. Self-actualisers were now discovering solutions to long-standing problems, and could see that it was possible to live without creating problems. They could see that everybody could live without exploiting one another, and it was completely possible to create planetary peace and harmony for everybody. For some it was obvious, even self-evident. 

 Organisational Outcomes

Hierarchical structures were starting to become more flattened, with fewer levels, to improve effectiveness. Networking among key people became the new way to get things happening, giving rise to the ‘informal’ organisation chart of how things actually worked. Informal conversations, it was discovered, sometimes generated more and better ideas than formally structured brainstorming groups. Many transformative ideas were percolating up from lower echelons – creativity was even, and sometimes especially at the coalface. Conventional wisdom was turning on its head. “Getting it right first time – no excuses for trial and error”, became a common orientation that sensitive and aware people were adopting. A new way of approaching life and work was emerging.

 Open Universities and Discussion Groups

“Open” universities were run on campuses, outside of normal lecture hours, sharing ideas and exploring cutting-edge issues that were too new to be offered in lectures, but which were far more vital, relevant, optimistic and interesting. Conducted more as open discussions, subjects included ways to increase wealth harmlessly, and ways to measure genuine national wellbeing, victimless capitalism, altered states of consciousness, humanity’s higher nature, group dynamics, planetary co-operation, peace studies, ecology, future studies, etc. For many it was as if they had walked into the future, where everyone had insight into the present. Some of these subjects have since become mainstream university courses.

Right-Brain Teaching and Activities

Courses teaching an understanding of right-brain nature and activity were combined with courses offering activities that drew upon the right side of the brain, and included undirected, spontaneous art, etc.

 Group Dynamics

Such unprecedented co-operation gave rise to the sense of the coherent group – people coming together for purposes of mutual enrichment. Inter-personal and group psychologies studied the dynamics of interactions, and the ways that people, because they affect one another dynamically, can contribute to the harmony and creativity of the whole group, and thence achieve outcomes far in excess of the sum of human inputs, resulting in an ‘ever-expanding, spiralling upwards’. Under group conditions, growth in consciousness became thought of as exponential. 

 Group Psychology

Group psychology became the new, cutting-edge field of understanding. Group dynamics, where the positive, creative energy of a group could uplift all of its members, began entering into sociological and psychological circles. The interactive group became the preferred method of teaching management to executives. The therapeutic group became the most effective tool for psychological healing. The usual idea of the powerful leader and passive followers gave way to the valid and empowering group, where interactivity in an atmosphere of openness and goodwill could enable the group functioning as a whole to understand, inspire, cognise and resolve on a level well beyond what individual contributions could achieve. 

Community Households and Neighbourhoods

Creating community households, of like-minded persons became a more acceptable way to live, and more advantageous. Increasingly, houses were networked together to pool and share where interests overlapped and save time, energy, outlays, etc. As community households became more prevalent, city neighbourhoods of many community-households developed into large, informal, sprawling communities, with information exchanges, food co-ops, resource centres, bartering and work-sharing arrangements, enabling a more relaxed, higher quality of life. City living in these areas became exiting and delightful, free from exploitation, crime and abusive living.

 Learning Exchanges and Resource Centers

People loaned and pooled their books to become neighbourhood lending libraries, focussing on the emerging aspects of better living, much of which could not be found in conventional mainstream libraries. Resource centres were set up to allow people to disseminate their new understandings and share their experiences and new skills with interested others.

 Home-Based Self-Employment and Cottage Industries

Many people began using their skills to enable self-employment – working for oneself, setting up ones’ own business, and working out of home became a new and empowering way of approaching work and business for many liberated people, saving on expenses, enabling 24 hr ready access to the work environment, and allowing far greater control of their own personal lives, by giving greater family time, etc.

 For some people it meant they could now work according to their needs, their interests and their biological clock, rather than being compelled to follow the some rigid 9-5 Monday to Friday regime. This enriched many neighbourhoods, and also provided the lead and created the groundwork for the emerging service industry that plays a major role today.

 Alternative Bookstores

Providing a wide range of in-depth books in subjects not yet understood by mainstream bookstores, including ecology, hand-made houses, natural therapies, Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism, yoga, metaphysics, meditation, whole-food cooking, organic gardening, etc, as people studied and discussed and explored and experimented amongst themselves to find out what worked and how, and how to adapt it for their own local needs. Today, many of these have found their way into mainstream bookstores.

 Organic Gardening

Backyard organic gardens became ways to produce health-promoting food, live off the land, and become more self-sufficient. Organic gardening is farming sensitively and intelligently, without chemicals, pollution or soil degradation, using only natural products that continuously improve the soil. Organic produce became known to be tastier, more nutritious, more disease resistant food. Organics has entered the marketplace, commanding premium prices for produce.

 Organic and Bulk Food Coops

Neighbourhoods could purchase excellent organic produce at very good prices by organising a bulk and whole foods co-op to enable purchasing direct from suppliers, and then redistributing at low cost. This often provided a friendly neighbourhood focus where volunteers could work together for the improvement of neighbourhoods. Some food coops evolved to become the health food shops of today.

 Healthy Diet

One of the effects of contacting ones inner being is the appreciation of and taste for natural foods. People found their nutritional needs emerging as specific hungers, previously thought to occur only in pregnant women. By adhering to a natural diet, bodies become sensitive to and hungry for what is nourishing for their needs. The right foods to nourish and strengthen a body’s weak points are the first line of medicine, and give rise to those specific hungers that will address those needs, empowering bodies with vitality and resilience, without engaging in fad diets, or needing to go to athletic extremes.

 Natural Remedies

Complimenting natural diet was the urge towards gentler, natural medicines. Food as medicine, herbs, Homeopathy, Schuessler cell salts, Bach flower remedies, acupressure, massage, etc. were found to be effective for strengthening various aspects of the constitution, were harmless and free of side effects, and could be practiced at home by oneself and with peers. Many of these natural healing modalities acted on more subtle levels of the human constitution, that are only now beginning to be understood in the more advanced mainstream medical circles of thought. Homeopathy can be used at first aid levels, and at deeper levels, used to correct inherited genetic weaknesses and flaws; cell salts are used to replenish 12 basic salts that are present in the human constitution; Bach flower remedies are 38 individual remedies to heal subtle nuances of the emotional constitution. Much natural medicine is now know as wholistic medicine.

Healing Therapies

The cutting edge of therapy moved from psychoanalysis and behaviourism to humanistic therapies, as patients became clients and the focus shifted from social adjustment to self-actualisation. Different, but complementary therapies emerged to deal with pivotal events that mark the loss of, or more accurately, the covering over and blocking out of this essential essence by shock and trauma, denial, and introjected qualities – those unconsciously taken on by the person. Rebirthing alleviates birth trauma, from which clients had not healed. Primal Therapy deals with a major split in consciousness that often takes place in needs-deprived children around 5-7 years old, and which maintains for the rest of the person’s life as the drive for symbolic satisfactions. Gestalt Therapy deals with whatever the client is in chronic avoidance of, and which, when discovered and owned, reintegrates the person, and Client-Centered Therapy assists acceptance of whatever troubling experiences the client is inclined towards focusing on, to enable dissolution.

 Massage and Body Work

Many people learned Swedish massage, Rolfing, Shiatsu, Alexander Technique, Postural Integration, Muscle Testing, Touch for Health, and other forms of remedial bodywork to relieve the body of muscle cramps, energy blocks, emotional blocks and buried memories retained within the body. 

 Sexual Healing and Transcendence

Some people joined ashrams and practiced celibacy to break the captivating enthral of dysfunctional sexuality and overcome the “negative” emotions of fear, jealousy, insecurity, guilt and addiction, and enable intimacy, based upon shared feelings to take its proper primary place; whilst others else embraced tantric practices to master and transform sexual energy to facilitate access to truer states of consciousness.

 Meditation

Meditation is essentially about stilling the body, resting the thinking mind, abiding in the natural self- awareness that precedes and underlies the mind, becoming one with the love that underlies self-awareness, and reconnecting with ones own higher intuitive and visionary faculties that function in delicate, sensitive, compassionate and super-intelligent ways.

Some natural effects of meditation are:

• de-stressing the body, emotions and mind;
• healing past injuries, shocks, traumas;
• healing and transforming pain and unresolved suffering into compassionate wisdom;
• dissolving false assumptions, faulty logic, preconceived ideas, and prejudices;
• experiencing truer states of consciousness;
• abiding in pure self-awareness and love;
• becoming receptive to insight, intuition, inspiration and vision.

Transformational Technologies

Biofeedback machines enabled experimenters to audibly or visually, monitor brainwave activity, muscle activity and skin temperatures, as they were occurring, enabling gaining control of delicate, complex subtle internal processes, long believed to be involuntary, and enable greater internal harmony. This enabled internal correction of illnesses including high blood pressure, ulcers, impotence, incontinence, headaches, tinnitus, asthma attacks, paralysis after strokes, etc. 

 Personal Transformation

So interesting was the new trend towards liberating ideas, that the study of consciousness itself, and alternative, higher states of consciousness became the most interesting and intriguing subject of all. A broad-based, healthy-person, therapeutic psychology developed. Variously called the “human potential movement”, “transpersonal psychology”, “full humane-ness psychology”, this exploration transcended the uninspiring dichotomy of psychoanalysis vs. behaviourism, and introduced a psychology that was exiting, even exhilarating. New, wholesome systems of politics, commerce, management, working, religion, medicine etc, were explored, discussed, experimented with, written about, and taught in courses. Ecology entered mainstream thinking and became a brand new science. A wholistic paradigm was emerging that enabled a larger, friendlier, more inclusive approach to life.

 Spiritual Upliftment

Paralleling to movement towards societal reform was an equally powerful movement towards individual, personal reform as people sought to tap in and reveal their inner potentials. Psychedelics gave way to Yoga, Zen, Sufism, and other practices that deepened self-awareness that a person could do without external props such as ingestives. Buddhist and other forms of meditation were practised as ways to quieten the mind and allow a deeper, inner awareness to emerge. Encounter groups and humanistic therapies replaced psychoanalysis as the preferred way to heal the emotions and mind

 Gentle Birthing

Kinder, more gentle forms of birthing arose, that usually employed working with nature, and included La Maze, LeBoyer, water birthing and home-birthing. Care was taken to ensure the baby’s entry into this world is caring and nurturing, and not stressful or traumatic. 

 Playgroups and Creative Education

Allowing children to learn from play and interaction became seen as highly important to the developing child. Many forms of education were experimented with, including Summerhill, Steiner and  Montessori schools, each of which emphasise aspects of children’s necessary growth needs.  

Future Studies

Futurologist Marilyn Fergusson made a comprehensive study of the social and cultural change throughout the 1960s and 1970s and captured the essence as follows:

“A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change… Its members have broken with key elements of western thought, and they may even have broken continuity with history.

 “This network is without a political doctrine, without a manifesto. With participants who seek power only to disperse it, and whose strategies are pragmatic, even scientific, but whose perspective sounds so mystical that they hesitate to discuss it. People asking different kinds of questions, challenging the establishment from within. 

 “Broader than reform, deeper than revolution, this benign movement for a new human agenda has triggered the most rapid cultural realignment in history. The great shift overtaking us is not a new political, religious or philosophical system. It is a new mind – the ascendance of a startling worldview that gathers into its framework breakthrough science and insights from earliest recorded thought.

 “Participants range across all levels of income and education, from the humblest to the highest. There are schoolteachers and office workers, Famous scientists, government officials and lawmakers, artists and millionaires, taxi drivers and celebrities, leaders in medicine, education, law and psychology. They are in corporations, universities and hospitals, on the faculties of schools, in factories and doctor’s offices….

 “They are linked by their inner discoveries. You can break through old limits, past inertia and fear to levels of fulfilment that once seemed impossible – richness of choice, freedom, human closeness. Problems can be experienced as challenges, a chance for renewal, rather than stress. Habitual defensiveness and worry can fall away. It can all be different.

 “For the first time in history, we have come upon the control panel of change.”

Contributions to the Future

Many of these breakthrough discoveries have become regular mainstream items, and have contributed significantly to transitioning our civilisation out from the mechanistic 1950s, and opening it up to a bright new optimistic future. Some are still regarded by many as belonging to a sci-fi future yet to happen, even though they may be practised today in not so obvious places to avoid pushing it in the faces of intolerant conformists to the status quo, which may not be the most optimum way to facilitate advancement. 

A New, Whole-brain, 4D Paradigm For Living

There is a natural, wholistic, integrated, cooperative, nurturing and regenerating, life-affirming, self-actualising, consciously aware paradigm of understanding and engaging life, which opens up a whole new dimension to living, being and relating. It has been added to and expanded ever since to offer every aspect of life and endeavour a creative, optimistic problem-free way of fulfilling living, that solves and heals existing problems. It is our future.

This paradigm is how whole-brain, self-actualising people are inclined to act, when free from the constraining impositions of the mechanical paradigm. Some aspects of this paradigm that have relevance to intentional communities are described over.

 

Enjoying the Whole-Brain Paradigm

Living from Joy and Inner Directedness

Transcending the Old Paradigm 

The wholesome thrust of recreating society after WW2 enabled humanity to embark on a genuine fresh start. The urge and commitment to create a better society was overwhelmingly an enjoyable experience, was not too difficult to do, and was, by almost any measure a resounding success. The masses had created a decent society that was trending towards becoming more caring, creative, wholesome and sensible. 

 The global society had taken a major step towards planetary peace and prosperity, and the vast majority of people were happy with the outcome. And deservedly so – it was good enough to enable many, mainly younger generation to discover their own unique personal power, which enabled them to envisage, discover and create benevolent,  non-harmful, sustainable solutions in all relevant spheres of life, by responding to inspiration and inner direction.

The rebuilding process created an unexpected, unintended and very important discovery,– society itself had created a milieu conducive to self-actualisation, which guided and induced some people into shedding their constraining façade and becoming their true self, opening up a greater world of creative possibilities. By inadvertently creating the conditions that led to self-actualisation, they had:

• discovered a whole “higher” more wiser, compassionate, gentler and effective inner nature that fulfils the person;
• discovered that there can be a process which will facilitate unlocking the inner nature;
• discovered that society itself in its ordinary, everyday  interactions can provide the conditions for self-actualisation that can be as safe and effective as professional personal therapy;

Peaceful, People-Led Reform

This was not any institution led transformation. The seeds of change were in general discovered by imminent people at the top of their profession, breaking new ground during the 1950s. Their books flourished during the 1960s, which contributed significantly to people “opening up” and enjoying a better experience of themselves. New, creative discoveries came to be enjoyed as a common, ongoing, grass roots experience, and incorporated into their personal lives. Cutting-edge therapists had been describing the advanced tip of a growing realisation in consciousness, spontaneously emerging. In applying their new-found appreciation of life, a natural, cooperative, life-affirming, self-actualising paradigm emerged.

Some of these discoveries transcended anything the institutions understood, believed in, or could adapt to, as they were still playing out the old paradigm in their staid, predictable, backward-looking manner. These changes were occurring in people because of the people themselves, by how well they were actually relating to themselves and one another. By committing themselves creating a better society and a better world, they were able to improve their relationships socially, until the social milieu itself began uplifting people as a safe, wholesome and ecstatic experience. People found that when they gathered in groups for a higher purpose, an uplifting energy developed, that drew each person into a higher state of consciousness that they shared in common. The complete opposite to the consciousness-lowering experiences of mob rule.

 A way had opened up into a better reality where all interactivity could be growth producing in the best sense of the term. People were naturally and energetically, blossoming into a wholistic paradigm of trust, goodwill and cooperation.

 

Whole-Brain Paradigm

Exquisite Reality

Whole-Brain Paradigm                                   Left-Brain Paradigm      

• Natural, Wholistic, Life-Affirming,                  Learned, Dualistic, Fear-Based,
• Cooperative, Nurturing,  Self-Actualising,      Competitive, Exploitative, Egocentric,
• Sustainable, Community Spirited                    Unsustainable, Selfishly Individualistic

Personal

• integrity                                                       pride
• honesty and candour                                 suave and charm
• truth                                                            plausibility
• faith                                                            belief    
• love                                                            fear
• insight                                                        logical deduction
• intuitive                                                      analytical
• spontaneous                                             contrived
• responsive                                                reactive
• authenticity                                               conformity
• transcendence                                         submergence
• inner harmony                                          conflicting drives
• adapting                                                    rigid
• expansive                                                 constricting
• personal responsibility                             outer authority
• uniqueness                                               role modelling
• sensitive                                                   armoured/numb
• open minded                                             sceptical/gullible
• open hearted                                            cynical
• inner harmony                                         self-discipline
• self-acceptance                                      self-judgement
• self-awareness                                       self-analysis
• self-empowerment                                  self-esteem
• self-actualisation                                     self-imagery
• self-knowledge                                       peer evaluation
• unified consciousness                           dichotomised consciousness
• personal integration                                ego aggrandisement
• equanimity                                              discontent

Relating                     

• accepting                                               expecting
• trusting                                                   manipulating
• allowing                                                  controlling, bargaining
• voluntary                                                obligatory
• accommodating                                     intolerant
• free, unconditional                                 conditional
• openness, honesty                               secrecy, defensiveness
• honouring                                              loyalty
• forgiving                                                punishing
• benevolent                                            self-serving
• empathic                                              negotiated
• uplifting                                                enmeshing
• inspiring                                               persuading

Education

• appreciation and understanding               rote learning and recall
• assimilation and integration                      memorising      
• content, context and process                  content only
• exploratory learning                                 rigid curriculum
• experiential learning                                 abstract information
• developing potentials                               conforming to norms
• including life skills                                    narrowly defined skills
• pupil-teacher interchanges                      reliance on technology   
• ability streaming                                       age streaming
• self-learning at own pace                        instruction at set pace
• interactive                                                set procedures
• discursive                                                authoritative knowledge
• including active discussions                   passive listening
• learning as ongoing process                   learning for end-goal
• mental-emotional-imaginative balance    mentalised
• insight and discovery                               imparting knowledge
• demonstrations and experiments            book knowledge
• open air discussions                               classroom learning
• understanding                                         belief
• information                                              data     
• wisdom                                                   knowledge
• community input                                     bureaucratic determined
• both-and                                                 either/or

 Management               

• bottom up ideas-sharing                           top-down decision making
• worker participation                                  imposed solutions
• shared goals                                             management v workers          
• autonomy, innovation, creativity               conformity
• conserving and recycling                         conspicuous consumption
• designing jobs for people                         fitting people to jobs
• multiple skilling                                         over specialisation
• abundance                                               scarcity
• cooperation                                              competition
• solution centred                                       problem bound
• functions                                                  roles
• regeneration                                            exploitation
• long-term objectives                               short-term returns
• self-employment                                      corporate employment
• win-win                                                      win/lose

Biology             

• harmonious                                               chaotic 
• variety                                                      uniformity
• abundance                                               scarcity
• maturing                                                   static
• self-organising                                         random
• improving, intensifying                             fluctuating
• optimising, coordinated                            happenstantial
• cooperative, complimentary                    competitive
• sensitive, elegant; refined                       coarse, rough, clumsy
• enlightened, intelligent                             oblivious, unconscious

 Medicine                                       

• natural                                                       synthetic
• clients                                                        patients
• biological                                                  chemical and technological
• nutritiousfoods                                         refined foods
• non-toxic                                                  uses toxins
• probiotic                                                   antibiotic
• non-invasive                                            invasive            
• prevention                                               treatment
• healing                                                    stabilising
• promotes health and vitality                   attacks disease
• strengthens constitution                         weakens constitution
• resists diseases                                     increases resistance in diseases

 Politics             

• collaborative governance                         authoritative government
• participatory democracy                          representative democracy
• open government                                     closed government
• integrated policies                                    left/right polarisation  
• consensus decision making                    authoritarian decision-making
• stewardship                                             conquest
• nurturing                                                   dominating
• decentralisation                                       centralisation    
• networks                                                 hierarchies
• whole society concerns                         vested interests
• openness and transparency                  lobbying and secrecy
• appropriateness                                     expediency
• principled                                                pragmatic
• reconciliation                                          compromise
• collaborative                                           adversarial
• present-centred                                      past-based
• future-orientated                                     backward-looking

Enjoying the Life-Affirming Paradigm

By the early 1970s, it had become apparent to many that there is a way of understanding, which integrated the local and the global, the micro and the macro, the personal and the societal, the short and long term, which enabled well-motivated people, especially in groups, to evolve creative solutions that work on all levels and timeframes. For some it was the most exiting, ecstatic, nurturing, empowering, never-ending mind-blowing experience, way beyond imaginings. People were seeing and experiencing life in much friendlier terms, thinking far more creatively, and functioning more effectively.

A common basic understanding of a truly workable, unproblematic way of life was understood by a significant sub-section of western society, and was trickling through into mainstream, offering a wholesome, optimistic, easier and more workable way of connecting with ourselves, each other and the natural world, that benefited the planet as a whole. “Small is beautiful”, and “Think globally, act locally” became familiar catch-cries, and were being lived in all manner of small, local settings. Many people found their lives falling into place in the most exquisite ways.

 People were now discovering solutions to long-standing problems, and could see that it was possible to live without creating problems. They could see that everybody could live without having to exploiting one another, and it was completely possible to create planetary peace and harmony for everybody.  The youth had shown us our future.

 Global Upliftment

Sustainable solutions are durable and require little maintenance. They can be more expensive to implement initially, but are always far less inexpensive to maintain, and this increases over time. Sustainable solutions are free from obsolescence, do not pollute nor degrade the ecology, and have a vastly reduced ecological footprint. This means they are a net plus to the betterment of society and the world in general. They also minimise consumption and expenditure, and are free of chronic indebtedness or dependence on ongoing or repeat business.

If everybody embraced sustainability, economics would naturally reform itself, away from greed and exploitation and towards a more considerate, wholesome, ecology-friendly, sharing and sustainable form of economics, not through imposition and not dramatically, but gently and gradually, through people embracing healthy choices made by informed, caring, intelligent well-motivated people. This would lead to far greater egalitarianism all levels, from the local to the global.    

 Hope for the Future

The message of creating planetary peace and goodwill had spread right around the planet, carried by the media, and had been accepted by the masses of ordinary people, and without being blocked, mocked or derided. Society was mellowing, from an overly controlled post-war reconstruction, through decades of stable, responsible work and living, towards a truly open society, in a far more peaceful, trusting world.

 For a period of time, there was even growing hope that mainstream society would choose to embrace the obvious next step, that of a peacefully integrated planet, free of all major problems, and based on sustainability, cooperation, goodwill and trust, rather than pursue an unsustainable lifestyle that would lead to greater destruction, pollution, famine and wars. As it became apparent that the positive-future option was not going to be embraced, increasing numbers of people turned towards creating their own communities of sustainability, nurturing, peace and goodwill.

 

The Natural Person

Inherent Benevolence

By the 1970s, it was known, individually, and in common by many empowered, self-actualising people around the planet, that we each have an essence that is our own individual uniqueness, that we share in common, and is where we contact each other at the deepest, most meaningful level. Over the last several decades, this essence has been discovered and rediscovered, in different ways, as a consequent of varied practices, and has come to be known by many names, each of which express nuances of various experiences of a rich, inner consciousness. Terms include inner being, inner self, higher self, higher consciousness, super-consciousness, true consciousness, real consciousness, original nature, essential nature, true nature, authentic nature, essence, and authentic self.

These terms show the pervasiveness, richness and commonality of this realization. Those who experience their essence, or who have studied it in others, perceive some common themes:

•  a centre of integrity and identity at the very core of our being – our deepest nature is unconditional love and allowing, able to experience loving kindness, helpfulness, consideration, compassion, and manifesting in the world as a loving, healing, compassionate, wise social nature,
•  a life-enriching, sensitive, feeling nature, that links us to all other living beings and is able to experience acceptance, oneness, purity, innocence, sacredness, joy, ecstasy, rapture, bliss;
•  a natural, understanding mind, incurably curious to understand the ultimate mysteries of life, and able to work with clarity, alertness, awareness, acumen, intuition, insight, illumination, perspicacity, integration, understanding, equanimity;
•  a wise, integrated physical body, attuned to nature and able to balance and heal itself and abide in naturalness, calmness, peacefulness, wholeness, wholesomeness, healthiness;

 One of the most important discoveries about the nature of one’s essence is that it is pre-cultural, pre-gender, pre-class, pre-age and pre-education. Irrespective of a person’s upbringing, racial heritage or gender or life experiences, it still exists as pure essence, and is the meeting point where people can contact each other in truth, at deeper and more meaningful levels than the superficial trappings of society can provide.

 The inner essence, which is the real us, knows no hatred, envy, jealousy or vindictiveness, and is caringly cooperative, rather than ruthlessly competitive. In reality, we are an essence, and we have, a body, mind, emotions, and personality, that our essence, if we allow it, will express itself through. Our essence is our true, most basic identity, the part of us that is wise, compassionate and allowing. That is who we really are, all of the time, beneath the mis-constructed, out of touch overlay.

This part of us, which is the real us, is attuned to nature, and can sense some of natures rhythms and flows, and is always working towards greater enrichment greater balance, greater resilience.

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