I’ve been struck over the past few weeks how many people I know are contemplating embarking on different professional activities, or have, through circumstance, been obliged to reflect on where they are right now, in both the professional and personal arena. It seems that there is a reshuffling of attitude ocurring. Is it a coincidence that this is happening when we’re right in the middle of the most severe recession since the 30’s.
And then I received one of the books I had recently ordered from Amazon. It’s called “Conscious Evolution – Awakening the Power of our Social Potential” by Barbara Marx Hubbard. It’s amazing.
For the very first time in the 15 billion history of our universe, due to the amazing technological developments of the last 50 years we are understanding how nature works and so can become involved in its future. We are effectively involved in a conscious, as opposed to an unconscious evolution. As the book says “Only in the last fifty years have we gained the scientific and technological powers to destroy or enhance the planet’s life support system. Our generation has the ability to abuse or conserve these powers, to act, in a way, as cocreator”.
Hubbard postulates that there are five lessons in evolution. One of them is that “crises precede transformation”. And although she is talking on a grander scale in the book, I believe we can see some parallels with the effects that the current economic crisis is having on many people’s lives.
She writes, “When nature reaches a limitation, it does not necessarily adapt and stabilise, it innovates and transforms, as we saw with the single cell crisis. Problems are often evolutinary drivers vital to our transformation. We learn to look for transformations that the problems are stimulating. We view our problems positively and notice the transformations occurring around us. For example, the threat of nuclear weapons is forcing the human race to go beyond war. The environmental crisis is awakening us to the fact that we are all connected and must learn how to manage a planetary ecology. We learn to expect the unexpected and to anticupate the new.”
Food for thought as always…
