Dear Spirit to Spirit friend,
It seems more important that ever that we, as a human species, make radical changes. The landscape of our lives and our world is calling loudly for it...demanding it.
I was re-listening to a recording of spiritual teacher Jeff Carreira from a virtual retreat that I participated in during May. Jeff was talking about the need for a paradigm shift.
What does that mean? Jeff spoke to this brilliantly:
"A paradigm shift is not a change in the content but a change in the context.
It doesn't change what you are looking at but how you see it.
It's a change in where you are looking from."
Jeff cited a wonderful quote to illustrate this. A (supposed) conversation between philosopher Ludwig Wittengenstein and a friend.
"Tell me", Wittgenstein asked a friend, "why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the Sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?"
His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth."
Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it looked as though the Earth was rotating?"
To which his friend had no reply.
Is it possible that how we see/understand what we experience is based on the way things appear within the paradigm we have come to believe and live in? That we are living in a paradigm that describes life based on certain assumptions and beliefs that may or may not reflect the full breadth of what actually is?
Is it possible that we can change the context- where we look from- and we will begin to see and experience ourselves, others, and life differently?
It seems that it is.
We know that we can change our point of view in simple ways. If we look at our own lives, at the times we've had intense challenges. Maybe we had a deep conversation with a friend, family member, counselor or therapist to explore the issue. We may have come to a completely different understanding/point of view and see the issue from a totally different vantage point. Our perspective- context- may have flipped on its head, shifted 180 degrees. Everything looks and feels completely different.
And...there is the possibility of opening to an even deeper context/paradigm shift through spiritual awakening practices. A context that arises from the ground of who we all are, of what life truly is.
Through spiritual practices such as meditation, we may begin to open to a dimension of Consciousness that is, in and of itself, a different context in life. One that may reveal an extraordinarily different kind of sensing/seeing/understanding. A context/perspective that emerges from the deeper ground of who we truly are, one that is seated in the underlying essential truth of "What Is."
It is through this kind of paradigm shift that we as human beings will change dramatically. We will begin to evolve into our full potential, become who we are truly meant to be...and then so too will our world.
The opportunity to become a deeper/clearer/more awake and aware version of ourselves- one that lives in and from the ground of deeper context- is right at our feet. We just need to step in.
Our lives, the lives of everyone we know, and the life of our world, depend upon it.
In Gratitude & Love, Joanna
Comentarios