Community & Spiritual Evolution

[Guest guest]

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/community_and_spiritual_evolutionCommunity & Spiritual Evolution by Evatt Since childhood I have had the memory (or "a vision of the future", if

that's easier to understand) of people living in relatively small

intentional communities. I say small relative to the large cities which

have become increasingly the normal way of life in the past few hundred

years. We might be looking at anything from a few hundred people

through to perhaps 50,000 people. I know that the late mystic referred

to as OSHO said that research indicated that 50,000 people was about

the limit for a community whereby all the benefits of a large number of

people coming together would be experienced AND people would still have

conscious connection to and awareness of one another. I think Sri

Aurobindo may have come to a similar number in his vision of spiritual

community, but I'd have to look into it to be certain. My vision from

childhood was of communities much smaller than 50,000, yet these

smaller communities would then be sub-communities of a larger

collective. That larger collective may well grow to the order of 50,000

people, or so.

Having lived with this vision/future memory for much of my life, I

sometimes ponder on what the significance of such communities might be.

The following is a brief exploration of some of what comes to mind.

One obvious and rather significant consequence of living in smaller

communities is that people cease living under the vale of anonymity

that is such an inherent aspect of life in a large city. Here are the

common definitions of anonymous of which I am most specifically

referring to the first and third:

1. Having an unknown or unacknowledged name: an anonymous author.

2. Having an unknown or withheld authorship or agency: an anonymous letter; an anonymous phone call.

3. Having no distinctive character or recognition factor.

It is my observation that prolonged collective social anonymity often

times leads to people living within a chronic state of animosity.

Animosity both toward oneself and other people, either covertly or in

more obvious ways. In large city environments where intimate community

for the average person is typically lacking it is too easy to live a

life devoid of a deep heart-felt sense of love and empathy--empathy for

one's own being, for other people, and for life itself.

Being anonymous within the social fabric of one's society also tends a

person towards a state of chronic self-centredness, which gives rise to

a long list of pathological conditions. It is my observation that it is

typical for this self-centredness to manifest as either a state of

prolonged indulgence in self-pity and various feelings of

insignificance, or it may manifest as a state of self-aggrandizement,

egotistical behaviour, and narcissism. Both are forms of obsessive and

pathological behaviour, specifically we have the behaviour of being

self-obsessed and the pathology of being self-destructive. A person may

experience both of these states (self-pity and self-aggrandizement),

switching between one or the other, or even experiencing them

simultaneously. Both have their roots in a distorted sense of

self-esteem and a psyche founded on only a partial or limited sense of

self-identity. In ancient Hawaiian Huna it is understood that we, Human

Beings, are Divine Beings, and that as Divine Beings our only true need

is a mirror. The reason we have no needs except this one is that we, by

nature, are unconscious of what we are unconscious of.

Put another way, so long as our attention is fixated on the

manifest--which is quite normal when our Being is incarnating into a

body, as is the case for human beings--we become unconscious of the

non-manifest. Our own Divine nature primarily (for now) resides in the

non-manifest, until such time as we are fully self-realised. Until that

point of self-realisation we are to a greater or lesser degree

unconscious of own true nature, and we are unconscious that this is so.

Hence a mirror is required. That mirror is provided through the "world"

we perceive around us. Most especially through other people, and even

more especially through those particular people we attract into our

immediate perception and subsequent experience. That mirror arises

through relationship, be that our relationship to our self and our own

self-image, or relationship to other people, or relationship to life

itself and the many aspects of Life.

Simply put, the absence of intimate community within large cities

mirrors to us the absence of intimate communion the people in that city

have with themselves and their own true nature. When we move away from

living an incognito existence, with our true identity veiled by the

vast numbers of seemingly random and disassociated people that move

through of world, we move away from being dissociated from our own

essence. We also move away from living a life of chronic victimhood and

not taking full responsibility for our own experience. It is all the

more easy to blame someone else (some perhaps equally anonymous

"other") for our painful experience of life when we never really have

to intimately connect with, resonate with, and go into deeper

relationship with that other. This other can take the form of something

ambiguous such as the economy, my childhood, or the government, through

to something more explicit such as my neighbour, my brother, or my

boss. Whatever the case may be, when Man does not live in a social

environment in which collective social intimacy is the norm it becomes

very easy, and potentially unavoidable, to live a life based on

projecting one's unconsciousness onto other people, whoever those other

people might happen to be from one moment or situation to the next.

In the above situation the mirror life so readily provides us with,

ends up only reflecting our unconscious and distorted perceptions of

Self. It in fact reflects much more, yet ordinary Man has not the eyes

(until awake) to see more. We then can't help but live life with an

unconscious and distorted perception of everyone else as wel.l This is

the basis of karmic relationship and karmic participation with life. On

the other hand, when we live in a community of people where there is a

natural degree of intimacy between the various members of that

community, projection of our unconsciousness becomes a much less viable

solution to avoiding the pain we are harbouring and the stories about

life which no longer serve us. Simply put, we have to face ourselves.

Most especially we are forced to face ourselves in the face of those

around us. We each keep ourselves and each other in check. Just as it

is difficult for a child to unconsciously cause itself harm (e.g. by

lighting matches in its bedroom and burning itself) when a parent or

caregiver is regularly and consistently checking in on the child, it is

also difficult for people in general to live in harmful and

self-centred states when a community of people are regularly and

consistently checking in on them through day-to-day conscious social

interaction.

As I write this it is becoming apparent that the operative word here is

conscious. People within large cities do have degrees of community

around them, such as a community of co-workers, a community of fellow

students in college, and so forth, but these communities are typically

lacking in conscious interaction. Rarely, if at all, do the members of

that community expose, let alone life from, their Authentic Self.

Typically no member of the community is even conscious of his or her

Authentic Self. It remains unconscious and hence the people within that

community interact unconsciously, all mirroring the each others'

unconsciousness.

What I referred to as an intentional community in the opening paragraph

I could also refer to as a conscious community. I suspect that with the

increasing number of people waking up to (or experiencing the emergence

of) their own true nature in the world today, we are also going to see

an increase in the formation of intimate, conscious, and (I would say)

spiritually intentional communities. My own observation is that this is

exactly what's happening. Many of these communities are arising beyond

the boarders of the cities, whereby the people establish another way of

living and relating that they felt was not possible within the inherent

unconsciousness of a city environment. There are, however, many of

these communities arising within the confines of existing cities. They

are perhaps less obvious to the average observer--with a sprawling city

as their backdrop (as opposed to a rural and more natural

environment)--although they are just as significant for those

concerned, and for humanity as a whole. Examples, both big and small,

of such communities are those that form around particular spiritual

teachers, yoga centers, permaculture-based urban garden projects,

religious affiliations (those of a more progressive and less

unconscious kind), alternative schools, artistic communities, and so

forth.

It is through conscious communities, particularly those of a kind that

encourage their members into greater awareness of and participation

with Nature (that of the Earth and Man's true nature), that the

emergence of global spiritual awakening and collective- and

self-responsibility is occurring today in a very powerful way.

What are the ways in which you are creating greater conscious community in your world?

Author's Bio

Born and raised in New Zealand, Evatt has been a contemporary

mystic and Yogi since childhood. He writes extensively in the form of

articles and books. His first book, "Peace, Power, and Presence", has

received four awards since publication in 2008. He travels the world

extensively, giving workshops, retreats, and talks in Canada, the USA,

New Zealand and Europe. He teaches on a wide range of topics, all in

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