New Human Technology: Focalizing Dynamic Links

Allow me to flow through you unrestricted, and you will see the greatest magic you have ever seen. – Klaus Joehle

This article and my recently published book, Focalizing Source Energy: Going Within to Move Beyond, were both inspired by a series of four articles I wrote for GoodTherapy.org last year. Observing the relationship between a most notable therapeutic resource and me is like watching the emergence of a natural dynamic link, energized with dynamism and positively moving forward.

Just prior to his death, the visionary anthropologist Joseph Campbell explained that mythology, in his view, is what provides a society with a reflection of its plight. It is grounded in the present, and it evinces a sense of security or stability in a common journey. He also suggests that things have changed so quickly in the past 50 years that we have been unable to create new mythologies to mirror our current existence and give us a sense of stability in the present. Our old mythologies and rituals, be they cultural or religious, simply fail to meet our current needs.

Our mythologies have become outdated. We are changing so quickly that there is no time to develop new mythology to inform and give perspective to our experience, so we are left stranded and feeling isolated from the world around us. Myths used to give us a context and stability, explain our experience, and put it into perspective, thereby holding the human consciousness intact and encouraging us to act with responsibility, respect, and concern for the world around us. Absent myth, this stability has dissolved. We need new modes of being that will help us consciously bind ourselves to one another and to a common purpose.

He suggests that the next logical, evolutionary mythology will involve knowing oneself in a much deeper way, going within to find greater identity with others, and even with our planet as a whole. Until we center ourselves, in ourselves, we will remain adrift. In this center of ourselves we find body wisdoms of both worlds: the rational and irrational. We learn the language of the inner self and are awakened to our own inner knowing. This emphasizes the reality that we must continue to allow the opening of ourselves so that we can serve as role models to each other in the co-creation of a “partnership” future that is respectfully lived from the inside out.

Campbell predicted that new mythologies emerging in the 21st century would involve a development in human consciousness. “Knowing one’s self” in this way unleashes new energies. The knowing of the self will bring us the peace, equanimity, and stability that mythologies of the past once provided.

Using the Past to Create the Future
William James, father of pragmatism, teaches us that in an ever-changing universe, certain guidelines must be applied. New technologies must come out of, and yet honor, old realities. James suggests that we need to lean on older working systems while discovering new facts that we can grasp and use, so as to update and integrate this link from the past with that of the future. New wisdoms and modalities are the products of new experiences and old methods combined, mutually modifying one another. We need new ideas (from our new experiences) that we can ride on: ideas that will actually carry us somewhere, ideas that are alive with possibilities and grounded in experience, not just in the abstract. When we are in the midst of such ideas, James reports, we actually “feel the total push and pull of the cosmos.” A feeling that we are on the right path runs through us, emanating from our core, and then we must test our ideas in the world of reality.

I think of addiction as the sacred disease. Very probably, God created alcoholism in order to create AA,  and thereby spearhead the community movement which is going to be the salvation not only of alcoholics and addicts, but of us all. – Dr. M. Scott Peck, Further Along the Road Less Traveled

Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the few early examples of just such a new mode of being. This community-based healing movement is a demonstration of consciously connecting with others for a greater and commonly held purpose. Alcoholics Anonymous has held together for the better part of a century without contracts or money being exchanged, and with complete financial transparency. It is a system of communication and an exchange of energy where the focus is on the suffering and healing of the alcoholic, rather than on personal stories or egos. In this way it is a shift from an individual, ego-bound perspective to a broader, larger, eco-systemic view of the entire community.

Many participants in an AA meeting experience a “feel good” sensation because they are coming there to feel who they are and how we are all connected. There is a spirited component that serves oneself and that of fellow alcoholics. Old-timers (often invited sponsors) connect with newcomers and share their own experience in recovery in ways that become a resource for them personally while also supporting the budding recovery of that newcomer. It’s a win-win-win; the 3rd win being that of the collective. As people come into AA, some choose to remain there for many years while others shift under their new ground of being. The program is very fluid and one remains engaged as long as it serves the present moment.

There is a human technology underneath AA meetings and other such nonhierarchical organizations that enables them to operate organically and, in the case of AA, has allowed it to thrive and grow into a world movement without the trappings of structure and organization. When people come together in this way, they connect with something greater than themselves that is a resource for their recovery. This something greater has the potential to connect us with the world around us more deeply.  In this way, AA is more than merely a community movement and is perhaps, as Peck suggests, really a model to positively affect the world, as we explore other applications and realize the full potential of this human technology for our collective well-being.

It is a fact that people are 99.999% space, being made up of atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles that are mostly empty. – Peter Russell, From Science to God

In The Global Brain Awakens, renowned physicist and futurist Peter Russell describes the possibility of our collective consciousness growing into a nervous system — a one mind of all minds, if you will. He demonstrates the actual possibility of global illumination being as imminent as the threat of mass annihilation. He does this with the legitimacy of real science, substantiated by research and presenting a view of the earth as a living being with each person upon it a cell in the planetary nervous system. In this view, he sees humanity’s potential as a fully conscious organism in an awakening universe.

This point of view builds on the work of another of his books, From Science to God. Here Russell presents the science behind the quote above, demonstrating how everything observable in our world, even our bodies, is actually energy moving in an unimaginable vastness. As dense as our world might appear, when one looks at the subatomic level there is immense space. From this perspective it is much easier to see how our inner and outer worlds are connected, rather than in conflict. He suggests that the energy of light is the bridge between these two worlds, and encourages us to cross that bridge to find new meaning and deeper significance in our existence.

Forming a Vision within a Collective
From a focalizing perspective, we give attention to new possibilities as they emerge. There is no specific “call to action,” as that would suppose we know what it is others should do. In fact, I have no idea what they should do. The point of engaging in Dynamic Links is to connect with each other through the integrity and authenticity of who we all really are, so that our entwined energies and collective intelligence will outline the best possible future and allow for the conditions to be in place for that future to emerge.

Here is a vision for how our experiences can feel different in the future and how we might interact differently and with more responsibility and joy. Imagine a future world interconnected through cooperation, consciousness, and sustainability. Seeing ourselves as more similar than different, we realize that we are all in this together and our collective survival is contingent on each of us thriving individually while still being part of the whole. Recognizing our connectedness, we find that being in prosperity and abundance with one another is our natural state. And, rather than attempting to dominate the environment, we see ourselves as stewards of the planet we inhabit. Rather than fight against our conditioned thinking, we then each become a compassionate custodian of our own minds, able to craft appropriate responses to whatever we are alerted to by our physical senses.

We are finding new ways to be alive and consciously connected to the movement of every moment — whether through focalizing Dynamic Links or via any other method — finding the foundation of new principles for stepping out into the unknown, allowing the future to manifest through us in a new reality. The result is a thriving populace living sustainably across all measures of being: connected, contributing and conscious, with little recall of an earlier time of feeling unempowered, defeated, insignificant, or disregarded.

The result IS a thriving populace.

(This article contains pre-publication excerpts from the new book on the subject that I just finished writing with Barry Lipscomb.)

The preceding article was solely written by the author named above. Any views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the preceding article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment below.