God Gave You A Brain… So Don’t Use It

As children growing up, when we did something stupid or without thinking, our parents would turn to us and say “God gave you a brain…so use it!” But between now and December 21, 2012, the human race will actually evolve not by using the brain more, but – surprisingly – by using it less. It sounds absurd, but let’s look at what’s happening in our brains with different brain waves:

“Delta brain waves are seen only in the deepest stages of sleep (Stages 3 and 4). Theta brain waves are seen in light sleep and drowsiness (sleep stages 1 and 2). Alpha brain waves are seen in wakefulness where there is a relaxed and effortless alertness. Beta brain waves are seen in highly stressful situations, and where there is difficult mental concentration and focus.” – The Biocybernaut Institute: Advanced Brain Wave Biofeedback Training using Neurofeedback

Scientists currently measure brain activity by using an electroencephalogram (or EEG) that measures the brain wave frequencies. Each brain wave has a different frequency:

Delta brain waves – less then 4Hz
Theta brain waves – 4-7Hz
Alpha brain waves – 7-13Hz
Beta brain waves – 13-40Hz

In deep sleep, we see Delta brain waves – your brain activity is very slow. As you surface and begin to wake, they speed up a little, and become Theta brain waves. Now imagine your alarm goes off and you jerk awake: you have to leap out of bed, rush, dress, bolt down breakfast, and race out the house. You zip straight into Beta brain waves, without passing through the Alpha brain wave stage. If you weren’t beginning to wake up already, you’ll miss the Theta brain wave stage as well. Like a car grinding from first gear to fourth, you’ll shoot straight from Delta to Beta. (Read more about sleep patterns and brain waves. http://www.dreamviews.com/sleepstages.php)

Actually, we spend most of our waking lives in a Beta brain wave state – not always at the high end of stress, but within that range. We’re using the highest frequency almost all the time – but the lower frequencies have a lot to offer us. By using our brain less, the human race can change levels of consciousness for the better. Let’s look at each type of brain wave more closely.

Beta Brain Waves

The brain activity working within the “Beta” level of frequency, the highest frequency, is considered the normal state of waking consciousness. Nearly all forms of action, thinking, and problem-solving are done with beta brain waves. You’re probably using them right now, to read this. Most people at our current state of evolution spend most of their waking moments in Beta State. It’s by far the consciousness we are most familiar with and many of us would consider it the real “I” or “me” of ourselves.

Alpha Brain Waves

In the Alpha state, the brain is in a state of relaxation and meditation. This is associated with creativity and super learning – that perfect concentration that feels partly effortless and partly like the most focused you’ve ever been.

Most meditations and energy healing techniques utilize Alpha brain waves for relaxation and healing. Peak performances are also associated with Alpha brain waves. Recently, sports scientists have shown an influx of Alpha brain waves activity during extraordinary performances. So a clutch basketball player will generate Alpha brain waves before hitting a crucial shot and an elite golfer will produce Alpha brain waves before hitting a critical putt. These pro elite athletes will describe it at “quieting the mind” and “living in the moment” or “being in the zone”. Other extraordinary performances include talented actors who can lose themselves in their character and gifted musicians who lose themselves in their music. These special performers find their exceptional amount of creativity by actually creating Alpha brain waves.

Theta Brain Waves

In the Theta state, the brain is barely conscious – just before sleeping and just after waking; the border between the conscious and subconscious world.

While in the Theta state, the mind is capable of deep and profound learning, healing and growth – it’s the brain wave where our mind can connect to the Divine and manifest changes to the material world. During the deepest levels of meditation, Tibetan Buddhist monks can attain the “Zen” level of consciousness by suppressing the superior parietal lobe portion of their brain. The Theta state is associated with this kind of deep meditation and shamanic journyes. (That’s the bit that tells you where you end and the universe begins!) Similarly, during deep prayer, Franciscan Nuns can experience the “Holy Spirit” in the same way. Here are the names of higher levels of consciousness from various spiritual traditions:

Christianity: the Holy Spirit
Bhuddism: Zen
Yoga: Super Consciousness
Gurdjieff: Objective Consciousness
Sufism & Hinduism: Cosmic & God Consciousness
New Thought: Christ Consciousness

Delta Brain Waves

In the Delta state, the brain is in a state of deep sleep and unconsciousness. This is the realm where your soul resides, your unconscious, which stores the collection of memories of everything you’ve ever done, your free will consciousness, your life purpose, the reason you came into life.

Body/Mind/Spirit

It’s said that the Mind is the bridge between Body and Spirit. Scientific studies show that the lower your brain wave frequencies are, the quieter your mind and the stronger your feeling of spirit within the body. Enlightened spiritual masters like Jesus, Buddha, Moses and Muhammad were able to create their amazing levels of spirit and higher level of consciousness through their ability to control their brain wave frequencies.

Making a Conscious Decision to use our brains less

The increasing popularity of activities like Yoga, Tai Chi and meditation show that the human race is making a conscious decision to raise our consciousness by using our brain less. Western medicine’s increasing acceptance of holistic medicine, the power of prayer and the benefit of meditation shows that your frame of mind does impact your immune system and our ability to heal. We talk freely about stress-related illnesses and the impact of stress; we recognize that these different activities lower our stress levels.

But most importantly, our ability to change our consciousness brings the love, light and vibration of spirit into our day-to-day lives. And as a result, this brings bliss into our existence. Through collective consciousness (our deepest level of consciousness) or even cause-and-effect if you prefer, bliss will bring bliss and will create a better world to live in.

So let’s mediate, let’s pray, and with the assistance of Spirit, let’s create Heaven on Earth by consciously deciding to use our brain less. Preferably by December 21, 2012.

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Want to read more?

• Sleep patterns and brain waves: Dream View: The Stages of Sleep
  
• Alpha brain waves, creativity, and sleep patterns: The Biocybernaut Institute: Alpha Brain Waves
  
• Theta brain waves and healing: Formula for Miracles: Brain waves
  
• Changes in the brain during spiritual experiences: H2G2, Neurotheology - The God-Shaped Hole in the Head
  
• Meditation and brain waves: Crystal Links: Meditation brain
  
• Meditation and brain scans: Andy Newberg PhD
  

On the “New Eve” of Evolution

We discussed the empowerment of women in our last post, The Human Race hits the Mother Lode – but this isn’t enough to reach our age of new enlightenment goals of 2012. It’s not enough for women to exist and flourish within the existing patriarchal structure: we need women to bring the “divine feminine” into our society to balance its Yin & Yang, as well as maintaining that masculine energy. Some amazing women are out there doing this exact thing. Women on the Edge of Evolution, created by Katherine Woodward Thomas and Claire Zammit, is a movement that is creating a Feminine Power Global Community, to explore the creative potential of women to become active and empowered agents of cultural evolution. Amazing women like Marianne Williamson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jean Houston, Arielle Ford, Alanis Morissette and Melissa Etheridge give twice-weekly tele-series discussing how to come into the fullness of your power, self-expression and active participation in co-creating a better future for the world.

Here is just a small sample of what these amazing women are discussing:

Barbara Marx Hubbard
Barbara speaks of the crucial role of post-menopausal women in our world today, where the motivation of women moves from birthing babies to birthing the self: moving from Procreation to Co-creation. Women must become the “New Eve” for the world to return to the garden.

Marianne Williamson
Marianne speaks of the 17,000 children that die each day from starvation – one every five seconds – and if women were empowered and in the right frame of mind, this would never happen. What does that mean – the “right frame of mind”? According to Marianne Williamson, it’s not enough to empower women: women must become their true divine self.

Diane Musho Hamilton
Diane speaks of the The Gender Paradox – like a pendulum, women swung to their masculine energy to empower themselves, and now the pendulum begins to swing back to the feminine. The paradox is whether women have to choose between masculine and feminine energies, an either/or, or whether the real solution to the paradox is and/both.

Susan Schachterle
Susan speaks of how women can’t be leaders at the expense of being healers. The healing this planet needs right now can’t be done through political and military action. The healing necessary for the human race’s evolution will come from the intuitive wisdom and spiritual inclination of the feminine. And this feminine will evolve when women fall madly in love with themselves and work from a larger sense of purpose.

Dr. Anodea Judith
Anodea speaks of the need for our consciousness to evolve to the Divine consciousness when the human race has God-like powers – to birth humanity to early adulthood of God-hood. This evolution will change the love of power to the power of love.

Lucia René
Lucia speaks of unplugging the patriarch and the need to balance the feminine and masculine (lunar or solar) in our human existence. The human species must raise its heart-based consciousness in balancing feminine and masculine energies, as the Heart chakra is the natural balancer of the lower chakras (masculine) and upper chakras (feminine). This great linear change will happen in the year 2012 and the change will be enormously impacted by the role of women.

Marilyn Nyborg
Marilyn speaks of how our world is shaped by the masculine mind and women walk into this world not creates by their source. In the eventual wholeness for both males and females, both can experience their masculine and feminine energies, and we can unravel the patriarchy that’s in ourselves and our society.

Amy Ahlers
Amy speaks of cultivating a nurturing relationship with oneself – turning back to our feminine, which we currently devalue. This means waking up to our deeper wisdom and cultivating the courage to act on it: how receiving is powerful; how intuition is powerful; how we can’t listen to the big fat lies. We keep thinking that if we get one more thing, that will be enough – instead of saying, “I am enough, right now, and let’s play with that.”

August Gold
Answer the call. Life is talking. Are you listening?
Life is a conversation with yourself and your job is to learn its language. Once you learn its language, you will have all the support you need on a daily basis – moment to moment. Life talks to you through Life, personally and directly, and all of life is a movement toward perfection. So look at what’s happening to you instead of what’s happening for you. For those who listen, life will lead you to your destiny. For those who don’t listen, Life will drag you along anyway!

The “New Eve” of Enlightenment is upon us

With the year 2012 approaching, women are taking it to the next level. After 5,000 years of a patriarchal society, what are the odds of a “divine feminine” movement upon us right now, bringing the feminine energy we all need? Is this movement part of the New Age of Enlightenment? Is this movement part of the great spiritual enlightenment the Mayans predicted for 2012? For me, it’s hard to believe it’s not.

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Listen to the Women on the Edge of Evolution audio library.

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The Human Race hits the Mother Lode

For thousands of years, patriarchal societies have systematically denied women’s rights, independence, and intelligence. From Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages, women were treated as minors and as property, literally “given away” in marriage, as possessions. In early modern Europe, under the patriarchal religion of the day, 40 000 to 100 000 “witches” were executed – most of them women. The US Constitution left women with zero rights and zero representation.

At the time, most of these patriarchal abuses were considered appropriate, just – even natural. Today, society would be appalled at the very thought of the witch-trials in the Inquisition, and think of not giving Constitutional rights to women as barbaric. But are we still making decisions based on patriarchal prejudice? In 150 years from now, will historians look back at our era as inhumane and barbaric? Let’s look at where we’ve been – and at where we still need to go. Not only the treatment of women, but in the context of poverty, the military and the way we treat our planet environmentally – we will look back at ourselves with disbelief.

Women’s suffrage

The “first wave” of the feminist movement was fighting for the right to vote, in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course women had rebelled against their lot for hundreds of years before – most famously Christine de Pizan (15th century) and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792. But only in 1918 did women get the right to vote in Britain – if they were over 30 and owned houses! In 1928, this was changed to all women over 21, while in 1920, all US women got the vote. For most of us, this means our grandmothers’ mothers couldn’t vote.

Equal rights

Having the vote didn’t bring equal treatment. Swathes of discriminatory laws remained and the prejudices of a patriarchal society were deeply embedded. Pay wasn’t equal, women lacked civil rights and family planning support, contraceptives were illegal in some US states, marital rape was legal, as was discriminating against pregnant women, the Military Academies didn’t accept women, and many universities and colleges were men-only. The “second wave” of feminism, in the 1960s and 1970s, campaigned against all this, with massive legal success – and they changed not just the laws, but also many of the social attitudes towards women.

Breaking the “glass ceiling”

Nevertheless, many of these attitudes persist, and changing the law doesn’t change people’s behaviors. The City of London, district of stockbrokers, is notorious for rampant sex-discrimination and New York’s Wall Street is no better. But the world is still changing.

With female Prime Ministers and Presidents elected all around the world and the additional influence of women within the three branches of the U.S. Federal Government, the glass is starting to crack. Women are graduating at a higher rate then men from college and about a third of family breadwinners are now women.

It’s easy, and tempting, to conflate women with feminine energy. Certainly, our cultures encourage men to develop masculine-energy traits & women to develop feminine-energy traits. Often, showing the opposite trait is heavily criticized – women are called “bitches”, men are called “wimps”, and so forth. But as the last post discussed, both sexes work better with both energies. Women having higher positions in society doesn’t necessarily mean they bring feminine energy. For one thing, not all women are necessarily dominant in “feminine” energy, plus those values are traditionally undervalued compared to the “masculine” counterparts, so achievement is often through masculine energy in both sexes. Nevertheless, as our society learns to revalue women, so it learns to revalue “feminine” values.

The “feminine” impact on society

In the United States, since the signing of 19th Amendment, many compassionate laws and social programs would soon follow in the United States. Social programs like unemployment benefits, Medicare and Medicaid, and social security were provided to the most vulnerable. The Civil Rights Act, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the Americans with Disability Act followed to protect the minority citizens of a society. These social programs, laws and amendment were about creating a more evolved and vibrant society, as proposed by FDR’s New Deal, JFK’s New Frontier, and LBJ’s Great Society . With the year 2012 upon us, the next “feminine” agenda should address saving our planet — how about BHO’s “New World”? These great social program and initiatives aren’t exclusively credited to women – but we can credit them to a renewal of feminine energy and values: the soft, inward, receptive, intuitive, creative, multi-tasking, compassionate, and loving.

Women’s impact on society

The empowerment of women has immense benefits for a society. When women are educated, baby and child deaths decrease and family health improves – regardless of whether the woman’s income changes. Their children are more likely to be educated, and to do better at school. The Microcredit Campaign found that women are a better credit risk, and the UNCDF proved they are more likely than men to invest new income in their families and societies – when a woman benefits, so does everyone around her. A World Bank report showed that societies that discriminate against women are poorer, with worse government, a lower standard of living, and slower economic growth. Women are less prone to corruption and nepotism, are more politically active when they’re educated, have a lower carbon footprint and are more likely to take personal action to help the environment. Women’s rights don’t depend on them being so all-round-brilliant, but it’s a foolish world that refuses to benefit from all this!

A mother lode of feminine energy

So, after thousands of years of patriarchies, it’s obvious what a positive impact this influx of feminine energy has had. Empowerment for women reaps extraordinary benefits. More feminine energy is essential to balance the yin & yang and unravel our current patriarchal world – and this burden should not be placed on women exclusively. With the year 2012 approaching, and the Age of New Enlightenment upon us, we need feminine energy to increase the vibration of the planet.

The meek will inherit the earth...

For hundreds of years, we’ve divided our energy into “masculine” and “feminine” – whether we call it masculine and feminine energy, yang and yin, or left brain and right brain.

Masculine (Yang) Hard Outward Projecting Rational Logical Focused Firm Purposeful

Feminine (Yin) Soft Inward Receptive Intuitive Creative Multi-tasked Compassionate Loving

We’ve convinced ourselves that if we want to achieve anything, masculine energy is better. So look at the feminine energy again. Look at what we’ve tried to stamp out from our personal success – how our society runs – how corporations and governments function – how we treat our planet. Does part of you read that list and think “weak”? Can we afford to live without those qualities? Can we live without those qualities?

Every aspect of human life works better with a balance of feminine and masculine energies.

Individuals

We live in a competitive society. We want good, healthy, fulfilling things – a home, family, good food, our loved ones safe, a sense of purpose and achievement, the chance to do something that matters. To get these things, we have to compete, at school, in job interviews, at work, for money and bonuses, on the housing market, for promotion… So yes, we do need to be hard, outward, projecting, rational, logical, focused, firm, purposeful.

Masculine energy shows us HOW – feminine energy shows us WHY. It’s a cliché and a truism that wealth doesn’t bring happiness; equally true, lack of money can bring unhappiness. But it’s not the money or success – that’s only our HOW. We all know the trope of a wealthy man or woman, sitting in a palatial home, surrounded by fine art and expensive carpets, desolate and sick with emptiness. Feeling like somewhere on the road to achieving all their dreams, they lost something priceless. It’s true. They have. But not lost – perhaps, just buried.

We are emotional people. Whether we like it or not – and many of us don’t. In The Man Who Tasted Shapes, 1998, the neurologist Richard Cytowic showed that our decisions are not rational, logical, and purposeful as we like to think – they are, ultimately, emotional. Research continues in this area. Our rational brain plays, at most, the role of consultant. Even the most hardcore-logical person can never escape their emotion. It’s at the base of who we are. Our motivations, our WHY, is ultimately human, and emotional. It’s soft, inward, receptive, intuitive, creative, multi-tasking, compassionate, and loving.

If we keep the HOW and we lose the WHY, we end up tired and unfulfilled. We know what we’re trying to achieve – but none of us dares ask “What’s the point of it all?” Why? Because we’re compassionate and loving, that’s why. Because unless we’re dead, we care.

Society

Let the WHY back in, for a moment. Let yourself feel. Let yourself care about this: 50% of the world’s wealth goes to 2% of the human race. Most of the world goes to bed cold, hungry and illiterate. 100 million children live on the street. 17,000 children died of hunger today. And yesterday. Another 17,000 will die again tomorrow. And the day after. Yes, without the HOW there’s nothing we can do about this. But by all that is sacred, let the WHY back in.
Why? Because we can. We can fix this. “Handouts don’t work,” you say – yep, apparently so. And equally clearly, microcredits do work. We can’t say the HOW is impossible – HOW is what we’re good at, all we’ve been good at. But if we ignore WHY, we don’t.

By providing world class education, living wages, equal justice and universal healthcare for all citizens, we can create a safe environment that creates success. In a perfect “yin & yang” world, society should create a safety net that doubles as a spring board – compassionate and purposeful.

We have the means. We have the expertise, the technology, and the infrastructure available to take care of the whole world. What are we doing with all that?

Big Business

In its current form, the corporate structure wants the bottom line – at any cost. This environment encouraged the behavior of such companies as Enron and WorldCom, who found the devastation of others acceptable in acquiring their own personal wealth. The Alpha Male environment of our financial institutions, our banks and stock markets, is a recipe for disaster. Three key factors in the banking crisis were:

• • unwillingness to be wrong or appear weak (so you trust yourself against the facts)
• • an intensely male environment (this drives up testosterone, which in turn drives up excessive risk-taking)
• • rewards for short-term success (instead of long-term stability)

This has already devastated us. But corporate and banking culture remains the same, flawed model. And this is some of what corporations control in our society:

Media ~ Finances ~ Agriculture ~ Real Estate ~ Manufacturing ~ Insurance ~ Health ~ Entertainment ~ Transportation

Are you comfortable with that?

Corporations seem like monolithic powerhouses – but they’re not. They’re made up of people, each with their own HOW and buried WHY, and all of us need to return to our why. Otherwise, we’re not only purposeless – we are well and truly screwed.

Of course the masculine HOW is not the only way, however traditionally dominant it is. New management styles are emerging and many corporate leaders and entrepreneurs show profound compassion: Bill Gates, with the Gates Foundation, AIDS vaccine, and malaria research; Omidyar, with the micro-loans; Richard Branson, with Green Energy. Everyone’s a mix of masculine and feminine – and we need both.

Government

Governments are no different. Traditionally and still male-dominated, most maintain a heavily alpha-male environment focused on masculine energy – with all the pitfalls we saw in the banking crisis. It’s not a question of “add more women”. Women are just as capable as men of suiting up in masculine energy. It’s a question of revaluing feminine energies – in men and women. While our masculine energies start wars, snatch resources, and modernize the military to the point of potential self-destruction of the human race, meanwhile failing the duty of care to its own citizens, the problem is obvious. Yet world leaders who do exhibit compassion and offer non-violent solutions – King, Gandhi, and Mandela – go down in history as our greatest. Even Jesus Christ said, “Love your enemies.”

The World

We live in a patriarchal world, emphasized by our need for progress even at the expense of our Earth. Masculine energy sees feminine energy as weak, and meek. But we can make ourselves whole again, and we can evolve. And the meek will inherit the earth

The Mayan Calendar’s promise

What does the Mayan Calendar tell the human race is coming – inevitable Armageddon? Inevitable Enlightenment? Something in between? Nothing at all? Both NASA and the Mayan elders agree: disaster isn’t imminent. Instead, our evolution could take a huge leap forward, through collective intelligence.

Not disaster but enlightenment

Prophecies of doom for December 21, 2012 are plentiful. Planet X is going to collide with us – or possibly Niribu – or a massive solar flare will torch us all – or the earth will turn on its head – or a massive planetary alignment will destroy us all… Reassuringly, no scientific evidence backs up any of these fatal forecasts. Ian O’Neill, an engaging science writer, runs through the misunderstandings behind the different claims in his articles on 2012 and even NASA steps in to reassure us there’s no imminent disaster. The stuff of movies is not the stuff of fact.

Mayans themselves say 2012 is not the end of the world – quite the opposite. Gerardo Barrios, who grew up among the Maya Mam tribe in Huehuetenango, interviewed close to 600 traditional Mayan elders about the calendar and its prophecy. The Manataka American Indian Council website quotes his brother Carlos’s book, Kam Wuj: El Libro del Destino: “They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed.”

Measuring more than time

The Mayan calendar is intricate – unlike our own, it doesn’t just measure the seasonal year and mark the moons. In fact, it uses three calendars simultaneously: the Haab, the Tzolkin, and the Tun.

Thanks to Quantum Co-creation for the basis of this image

Imagine the three calendars as three cogs, each turning one day at a time. The Haab has 365 days – that’s for seasons, farming, and taxes. The Tzolkin has 260 days, and gives the intention of creation for each day. The Tun has 360 days: this is the prophetic calendar which traces the wave of creation. They all start together, and all turn together, but each lasts a different length of time – so to get back to their original starting point takes a very long time. About 5,125 years. (One could spend many happy, meditative / mathematical hours with these numbers.) And that is the Mayan long count. That’s what comes to an end on December 21, 2012. To an end – but also to a new beginning.

It measures not only time, but also the nine levels of consciousness of the human race that lead up to enlightenment. These are the nine underworlds, represented by the nine-stepped Mayan pyramids.

Get this image as wallpaper here

All nine underworlds end at the same time: December 12, 2012. Counting backwards, each one lasts 20 times the previous one. And each one represents a distinct stage in development and consciousness:

Cycle	Consciousness	Event	Starts	Lasts
Cellular Cycle	Action/Reaction	First Live Cells		16.4 Billion years
Mammalian Cycle	Stimulus/Response	First Live Births		820 Million years
Familiar Cycle	Stimulus Individual Response	First monkeys: Australopithecus Afarensis		41 Million years
Tribal Cycle	Decision Making	First humans: Homo Sapiens		2 Million years
Cultural Cycle	Reasoning	Spoken language		102,000 years
National Cycle	Law & Punishment	c. Stonehenge	Aug 11, 3114 BCE	5,116 years
Planetary Cycle	Power		Sep 14, 1756	256 years
Galactic Cycle	Ethics		Feb 28, 2000	12.8 years
Universal Cycle	Enlightenment		April 5, 2012	0.72 years

2012, the time of enlightenment, is almost upon us. Does it really look like the human race is going to make a quantum leap in evolution? Our current behavior is hardly persuasive. But there is something we have access to which could help with such a transformation: collective intelligence.

Collective intelligence

Collective intelligence is a shared, group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration of many individuals. It appears in a wide variety of forms, one being the network of computers and knowledge which is the internet. Mass communication inevitably affects mass behavior. One conscious thought can be shared collectively, in critical mass, all in a single moment. Now just think what would happen if the one conscious thought was to love one another. And how do you think that would affect mass behavior? And would this change in behavior be a quantum leap in our evolution to the new age of enlightenment?

The Mayan calendar, having tracked evolution since the Big Bang, predicts that the human race will evolve to a new level of consciousness in the year 2012. What are the odds, after those billions of years of existence, that this is the moment when we have the capacity to organize a conscious thought to love one another all in a single moment?

Perhaps a critical mass of simultaneous, conscious thought of love can catapult the human race to the next level of evolution. Perhaps this is the evolution the Mayan Calendar predicted – or perhaps our reaction to the Mayan Calendar prophecy can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For want of a nail...

Cause links on to effect, until a single assassination has led to a holocaust, nuclear destruction, and the threat of destroying our whole species. We need to stop this. We need to think in a new way.

At the beginning of the 20th century, trouble was brewing in Europe. The Industrial Revolution had transformed societies, bringing steam trains to quiet backwaters, mass-production, and urbanization. The British and German Empires were flexing their muscles; the Ottoman Empire was declining; the Austrio-Hungarian Empire wrestling to unite its national groups; and Imperial Russia was reeling from its first revolution. These various powers were tenuously held together with a patchwork of treaties and alliances, and at its center, the Balkans: the “powder-keg of Europe”.

Then the keg blew. On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed by Serb Nationalist Gavrilo Princip during a formal visit to Sarajevo. This triggered a series of diplomatic events that led to the beginning of World War I, 15 million deaths, and the eventual devastation of Germany.

Rather than "the war to end all wars", WWI just led to worse. The severe punishments dealt out to Germany allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to power. This in turn led to World War II, with 73 million military and civilian deaths, a holocaust and attempted genocide – and the use of nuclear weapons by the United States. This weapon started its own chain: the United States and the USSR started a cold war, stockpiling nuclear weapons. The fate of the human race hung on Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD): if one side fires, both will end up dead. (Similarly, before World War I, Europe thought its “balance of power” would keep it from war.)

More powder-kegs were created. As well as advancing weapons of mass destruction, World War II led the UN to create Israel as a country for the Jewish people. This attempt at peace-making has led to tension, hostilities, and outright war in the Middle East for the last 60 years. The cycle of hatred, fear and violence just keeps going.

Was it all down to one death? What if Archduke Ferdinand had never been assassinated? What would the world look like—dramatically different, or is the cycle of fear and violence inevitable? Were the dominoes already in place; was it only a matter of time before first domino fell? Nobody knows. But we do know that when that first domino fell, the world wasn’t such a dangerous place. We weren’t capable of destroying our own species.

Can we carry on like this? In 2010, almost 100 years later, knowing that we’re able to kill our whole species, can we blindly wrap ourselves in our own flag, quiver at the sounds of our own politicians’ preaching the fear of the unknown, and hope and pray MAD will keep us safe from people who want to harm us? I believe we can’t. And it’s the natural selection of our own species that will end this level of thinking.

Albert Einstein once said “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them”. In response to having invented the H-bomb, he and Bertrand Russell wrote in the Russell-Einstein manifesto, “We have to learn to think in a new way … Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”

With Einstein’s wisdom, with our instinctive survival mode of natural selection, I believe it is time for the human race to evolve and raise its consciousness to a new level of thinking. It’s not enough to stop the next domino from falling: we need to remove the dominoes from existence completely.

The cycle for fear and violence has to end. So what’s the solution? I think, deep in our hearts, everyone knows the true solution – TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER. The most difficult thing on the planet to do is what the human race needs to do now. And I believe we have it in us, as a species, to evolve to this challenge.

But the greatest of these is Love

How can religion, a touchstone of morality and compassion, seem to create hatred? Perhaps it’s not religion that’s at fault, but how we attach ourselves to religion. If we detach our egos from our beliefs, we can follow our beliefs more truly – and learn to love.

How can religon invoke hatred? Some argue that the problem is believing in one true God. If you believe that, you have to be partisan and believe the other religions just have it completely wrong. But let’s look more carefully at the monotheist religions. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all Abrahamic religions, named after Abraham, the father of Israel. Abraham had two sons: Isaac, through whom the Christian and Jewish lines descend; and Ishmael, the ancestor of Muhammad, the Muslim prophet of God. That first divide sowed the seeds of the Crusades: almost two hundred years of bloodthirsty war. Christianity and Judaism separated with the birth of Jesus. Years of anti-Semitism and persecution followed, while Judaism and Islam still fight a horrific battle over their shared Holy Land. Did religion cause this violence?

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all preach love – above all. In the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus says, “The greatest of these is Love.” Judaism says that God chose the Jewish people to set an example of holiness and ethical behavior, through what they do. In Islam, one of the five pillars of faith is charity, or zakāt. This is literal charity, giving 2.5% of their wealth to the poor, but it’s also more: it’s sharing happiness among God’s creation, be it through kindness, smiles, or taking good care of the environment and animals. Sikhism, another major monotheist religion, declares that everyone is equal and should be treated equally, and that a good life involves meditating on God and good deeds to others.

Other religions also put love and compassion at the center. For example, the Hindu ethical code, Dharma, asks its followers to act in service to God and to humanity. Shinto, a Japanese faith, promotes harmony and purity in everything – not just in actions, but in a pure, sincere heart. Paganism says, “An’ it harm none, do as you will.” Buddhism has five precepts that all its believers should follow, and the most important is "Avoid killing or harming any living thing."

So what’s going wrong? The hatred and violence didn’t end with the crusades. It’s not restricted to the war in the Middle East, or to terrorists. It breathes every time we look at hate and suspicion at those who don’t follow our beliefs. It breathes when we condemn people who don’t do what we think is right. It breathes when we think like the Pharisees. It breathes in every angry hate-filled campaign. But however strongly we feel about something, hate, anger, and violence can never be right. You can’t defend your religion by breaking its most important rule – love. So what do we do?

The religions aren’t wrong – they preach love. We’re wrong. It’s not religion that’s at fault, it’s how we relate to our religions. The problem is the ego-mind, which says “my beliefs”. The important word must never be “my” – it must be “beliefs”. The belief must always matter more than ourselves. We have to let go of our egos and our need to be right, so we can put the true message first. And the true message doesn’t say hate the unbeliever, scourge them into obedience, harangue them into belief – it says LOVE. Love everyone. Help everyone. Hurt no-one. And as that little voice rises up saying, “Yes, but…” – let go of it. That’s not the religious creed speaking: that’s the ego, needing to be right. Let go.

The key is detachment. The ego will always exist and want to be right, but we don’t have to obey it. We can put our beliefs above our egos. And until we do, we’re like hungry people holding a recipe for cake, saying “Isn’t this great?” But the recipe isn’t the cake – it’s how to make cake. Having the recipe is not eating the cake. We have to follow the recipe. The recipe says, in every different language, love one another. This has to be more important than being “right” and not following the recipe can never be right.

In the end, no matter what religion you practice, spirituality is not an intellectual exercise that is either right or wrong. It's a state of being, where you experience light, love and a feeling of connection. The need to be right only puts up a wall to this state of being. Detachment from our ego-mind’s need to be right tears down this wall and opening our hearts magnifies the experience of this state. And for the human race to learn how to detach ourselves, while practicing our most fundamental beliefs, will be the corner stone of our spiritual growth and evolution.

How can we detach? The ego says, “But they’re wrong!” – let go. We mustn’t attach to religion, pinning our egos to it – we must follow the beliefs. And the same is true of this blog: this is not The Way, this is a way. And here are some of the ways to detach. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

• • Christianity: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (New Testament)
• • Christianity: “Now these three remain – faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (New Testament)
• • Islam: “Yet of mankind are some who take unto themselves (objects of worship which they set as) rivals to Allah, loving them with a love like (that which is the due) of Allah (only) - those who believe are stauncher in their love for Allah.” (Al-Baqara)
• • Hinduism: “One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus is untouched by water.” Bhagavad-Gita
• • Buddhism: "Whenever thinking imbued with sensuality [or ill will or harmfulness] had arisen, I simply abandoned it, destroyed it, dispelled it, wiped it out of existence." (Thanissaro)
• • Buddhism: “When his mind is rightly-gone, rightly developed, has rightly risen above, gained release, and become disjoined from sensual pleasures, then whatever fermentations, torments, & fevers there are that arise in dependence on sensuality, he is released from them. He does not experience that feeling.” (Thanissaro)
• • Sikhism: “The answer is simple: without this absolute surrender of the last vestiges of ego and selfhood and without such complete absorption in the object of one's love, one cannot attain that unwavering concentration of all one's faculties which is the prerequisite of all inner progress. Absolute love and self-surrender are only other aspects of complete and flawless concentration.” (Adi Granth)
• • Judaism: "You shall not covet...anything that is your neighbor's... You shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or anything that is your neighbor's. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also". (Old Testament)
• • Baha'i: “by detachment is intended the detachment of the soul from all else but God.” …and… "The essence of detachment is for man to turn his face towards the courts of the Lord, to enter His Presence, behold His Countenance, and stand as witness before Him." (Tablets of Baha'u'llah)
• • Taoism: “Fame or Self: Which matters more? Self or Wealth: Which is more precious? Gain or Loss: Which is more painful? He who is attached to things will suffer much. He who saves will suffer heavy loss. A contented man is rarely disappointed. He who knows when to stop does not find himself in trouble. He will stay forever safe.” (Tao Te Ching)