What follows describes the elephant-in-the-room in terms of human consciousness, something missing in the traditional analysis of how to respond to our growing personal and global crisis. All references I have shared before, but this time it feels closer.
We are faced with a breakdown of general social order and human values that threatens stability throughout the world. Existing knowledge cannot meet this challenge. Something much deeper is needed, a completely new approach. I am suggesting that the very means by which we try to solve our problems is the problem. The source of our problems is within the structure of thought itself.
Theoretical Physicist David Bohm
Society and culture are not separate from ourselves. The inner is the outer. We are the society. We think the crisis is out there, in the world; political, economic, the environment, violence.
The crisis is really inward and we are unwilling to face this. J. Krishnamurti
“Unquestioned acceptance of the given was,” Jean Piaget’s description of the early child. Joseph Chilton Pearce called this physiological and subsequently cognitive imprinting “The Model Imperative.” Society and culture act as a universal meme, a mental morphogenic field that has grown increasingly disassociated from our authentic nature, and is, therefore, toxic, poisonous. Toxic culture, not our authentic nature, is the model compulsively imprinted.
Failing to comprehend a fundamental and near-universal “misuse of memory,” epigenetically, beneath the level of conscious awareness or choice, this toxic field falsely defines each human being in self-sabotaging ways, poisoning their core identity-reality; their relationship to self, to others, and to the world.
We don’t really understand the nature of our thought process; we’re not aware of how it works, how it is disrupting, not only our society and our individual lives but also the way the brain and nervous system operate, making us unhealthy or perhaps even damaging the system.
We recognize that rational, orderly, factual thought, such as in proper doing science, is valuable. The kind of thought that is disrupting, and perhaps even damaging the brain and everything it does, is self-centered thought. If the self were really there, perhaps it would be correct to center on the self [and its mirror twin culture] because the self would be so important. But if the self is a kind of illusion, at least the self as we know it, to center on something illusory, which is assumed to have supreme importance (reification), will disrupt the whole process. That disruption will not only make thought about yourself wrong, it will make thought about everything wrong, so thought becomes a dangerous and destructive instrument all around. Theoretical Physicist David Bohm
The crisis is indeed inward, and perhaps the time is ripe to face this. By inward, Bohm means the manner in which thought as a system, not simply content, operates. Bringing this fundamental system to order, negating the causes of false views and self-deceptions spontaneously and universally reveals an identity-reality that is true and supportive of our authentic nature. Discovering this authentic nature within ourselves, with its implicit identity-reality, is the prerequisite. Inward and outward wholeness follow. With this inner awakening – everything changes. Without it – nothing changes.
The remedy, David Bohm’s completely new approach, abides in the discovery of a state of mind and dimension in human consciousness that is not identified with reified mental images, a radical departure from what is assumed to be normal. To perceive thoughts’ inherent limitations, we must step out of the field of conditioned thought, and its enchantment, the state we habitually believe will solve our problems.
What Buddhist call “mindfulness,” complete attention, or choiceless awareness, opens the door. Resting firm in this state of complete attention, one uses a strict form of self-debate and logic to negate the false images, beliefs, and counterfeit identities induced by comparison, names, fame, and shame, about others and one’s self.
Returning again and again to mindfulness, a state called “always awakening” prevents this distilled clarity from dissolving back into reflexive identification with new reified mental images. From this authentic and pristine default state, a different quality of action unfolds. Free from implicit self-deceptions and shared delusions, an identity-reality that is true and supportive of our authentic nature expresses spontaneously, guiding thought to explore new, “entangled-empathic possibilities,” historically excluded by the fixed content found in conditioned thought and memory.
It is written; “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
“Behold, I make all things new again.”
Michael Mendizza