Sunday, January 4, 2015

Images in UNITY

These pictures, captions, and descriptions are in my book UNITY. With a subtitle that promises The Art and Science of Transformational Change, I include fun, powerful, important, descriptive, sacred, and simple images that convey ideas better than just words. If you just look at the images in Unity, you'll have a solid understanding about what the book is about.

For the full document, see:
http://tinyurl.com/Unity-Art-Sci3.

Preface


My napkin sketch is a mental model of UNITY’s flow, from the first chapter on the crisis of society living in dark in Plato’s cave; to the second chapter on the vegan revolution, helping to lead individuals and society out of the cave; the third chapter on achieving higher consciousness; the fourth chapter on the environmental crisis; and the fifth chapter on the crisis of governance, organizing, and the subsequent return to practical affairs: going back into the cave for revolution and achieving transformational social change.
 


Buddha’s Sombrero

My napkin sketch of UNITY’s plot is Buddha’s sombrero. Similar to classic mandala art representing the universe, cosmos and Enlightenment, I’m depicting Buddha floating in the multiverse of the infinite ocean of cosmic consciousness. 

 Note the other symbolism: the swastika is an ancient symbol of peace and infinity in time (eternity). Due to our era of spiritual darkness and paradox, this is now seen as a symbol of hate. Also, Buddha is touching the ground, symbolizing connectedness and the importance of staying grounded in physical reality on Earth while meditating. Buddha sits on a lotus, a symbol of purity and spontaneous generation and divine birth

The lotus is also a motif of Plato’s cave: the lotus rises through and grows above the murky waters, representing the progress of the soul from primeval mud of materialism through the waters of experience, into the bright sunshine of Enlightenment. Buddha’s Sombrero also represents not taking life too seriously. The issues are important, but have fun with it! 

Introduction
 


E Pluribus Unum
Out of Many, One


 Many values are captured in the most widely communicated piece of printed material in history: the one dollar bill. E Pluribus Unum, describes the ultimate mission of the US. The eagle faces the olive branch indicating peace is the preferred tactic. It's a sacred truth and the de facto motto of the US, on the Seal of the US.





Another key image is the pyramid is capped by the spiritual eye indicating the order of the ages is to be completed by The Spirit. Below the pyramid is the motto, “Novus Ordo Seclorum” ("New Order of the Ages"), described in the Prophecy subsection in the Higher Consciousness chapter. It’s a prophecy for Awakening. “Aspire to lead the world to paradise.”





This mythic cycle of “the hero’s journey” incorporates the ideal of society, where individuals are cooperating and fulfilling unrealized possibilities, linking individuals with a meaningful social purpose, and balancing personal and social wholeness. The highest potential is a unification of the individual with the whole of humanity. Our transformation involves dissolving our attachment to our identity and the “pleasures” of our lives, the barriers keeping ourselves from realizing our true selves and direct experience with higher consciousness.


  Chapter 1: Disunity to Unity 



Population & Consumption
 


Chapter 2: The Vegan Healthcare Standard




 


The whole food, plant-based (vegan) diet is about consuming plant-based foods in forms as close to their natural state as possible ("whole" foods). Eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, beans and legumes, and whole grains. Avoid heavily processed foods and animal products. Stay away from added salt, oil, and sugar. Aim to get 50-80% of your calories from carbohydrates, 10-40% from fat, and 10-40% from protein, depending on your individual constitution.

In other words, the diet is simple: eat whole, plant-based foods, with little or no added salt, or refined carbohydrates like sugar or white flour. A raw diet with over 70% live foods is even better: cooked food loses about 50% of its protein, 70-80% of its vitamins and minerals, and close to 100% of its phytonutrients and biophotons.
 

 Chapter 3: Higher Consciousness



Flow is when we feel in control, full of purpose, and in the zone. People turn unpleasant tasks into enjoyable, rewarding challenges. The best moments of our lives are experiences we worked hard to attain, when we stretch our body and mind to the limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. It doesn’t matter what the ultimate goal is, provided it is compelling enough. As long as it provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and a way to concentrate and become involved, any goal can serve to give meaning to a person’s life. 

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs



  • Self-actualization – the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities, especially considered as a drive or need present in everyone; developing your capacities.
  • Peak performance – a state in which the person performs to the maximum of their ability, characterized by subjective feelings of confidence, effortlessness and total concentration on the task.
  • Self-transcendence—the overcoming of the limits of the individual self and its desires in spiritual contemplation and realization.
  • Peak experience—a kind of transpersonal and ecstatic state, particularly one tinged with themes of euphoria, harmonization and interconnectedness.


 Ken Wilber's Integral Theory



Fractal 
An infinite and fractal multiverse emerges on the energy/light spectrum.
 


This woman has immortalized her body and enlightened her mind. She juggles the five material elements in one hand and the universe in the other. She has attained mastery over creation. She stands in the golden egg of creation (hiranyagarba) which represents the seed of the universe.

This type of art, like Venus by Sandro Botticelli (an ardent Platonist), is not erotic, but a vision of heavenly beauty and a call to transcendence: there is interest in the embodied person, not (like in pornography) interest in the body or intent to arouse sexual desire. Plato’s eros is the origin of both sexual desire and the love of beauty. Eros is a form of love which seeks to unite with its object. A higher form of love, agape (love of god) is where the object of love is not possessed but contemplated, which involves the ascension of the soul into higher spheres.

 Ken Wilber's Integral Theory of Consciousness





Point A is ordinary reality in the observable universe.
Point B is Enlightenment


The diagram idea, the Euclidean geometric form of the physical universe, is from Ion Soteropoulos, The Infinite In Act (2008) and Metaphysics of Infinity: The Problem of Motion and the Infinite Brain (2013). How to move from A to B? The heart of the problem is the conflict between the finite and the infinite, its solution depends on reconciling this contradiction, thus achieving unity. This model is about shifting from Point A, the Aristotelian ontology of the physical body, the nature of our finite brain, and the finite analytic paradigm of empirical science, to the cosmic singularity, Point B, through the acceleration of technology and consciousness.
How to move from A to B? It’s called “the way,” “the path,” and “the work on oneself.”  For example, see Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff (1957, 2011), describing a way of gnosis or "knowledge of being" that combines (1) the fakir (Muslim) self-mastery of the body, (2) the monk’s (Christian) self-mastery of the heart and faith, and, and (3) the yogi’s (Hindi, Buddhist, and Jain) self-mastery of mental habits and capabilities—via Yoga, Vedas, and/or the Eightfold Path. There are infinite ways!



Trinity or Hospitality of Abraham (Andrei Rublev, 1411-1427).
In this artistic masterpiece, the identity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are shown equal. The light that shines around their heads is white, pure light, and that same white becomes the holy table, the place of offering. God is revealed and disclosed here, in the whiteness of untouchable light. The focus is on the chalice-bowl which reminds of an altar at Communion, where “we, who are many, are one body.” (1 Cor. 10:17). It’s a communal ritual sharing a single cup, symbolizing unity. It is God’s hospitality to us, the viewer, invited and welcomed to join. The tree of life above the Son is on the way to the open door of the house above the Father. It is the goal of the journey. The table is set and the door is open. Come. 
Rublev’s Hospitality of Abraham icon is also important because Abraham is a common father for the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim brothers and sisters. This spiritual unification, which is embodied in the Way of Peace, is a potential bridge that is needed to create the preconditions for the Messianic Age (a time of universal peace); to wake up to the perennial truth of all paths: the Divine Presence is the essence of who we are. The icon represents the principle that “God is One.” Abraham brings to us not monotheism, but a personal relationship to the one God. This awareness is what has the potential to unify all people in the awareness of our one-soulness.  It’s an invitation to eat and live in a way to enhance our communion with the Divine. It’s an invitation to return to God. 
The icon also exemplifies the importance of avoiding idol worship. The One became the Many and we are never separate from the One, but vehicles for the fulfillment of God’s work of unification of creation. Idol worship gives power to and focuses on any thing as if separate from God, or an intermediary of God—money, symbols (icons), physical idols, and so on. Idol-worship takes us away from the mystical truth that God dwells within us, as us.
Mandala


Most people have an Absolute they pay homage to, whether a deity or a scientific or political principle. For example, meditating on a mandala—representing unity and the universe— can also bring you to enlightenment. But the image you are beholden to can warp your perspective. Extravagant religious images are mere window dressing, and at best they are intermediate to a total grounding in the Absolute.  

 


Grand Relief of Eleusis
 Demeter, Triptolemos, and Persephone, 5th century BCE. Triptolemos (“primordial man”) was sent by Demeter on a civilizing mission to teach men how to cultivate grain.






Very tricky social and cultural dilemmas emerge if your consciousness extends beyond the language you know and the culture in which you exist.
–Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven





From Personal Evolution and Mental Technology to Global Transformation
From the US Military’s handbook on becoming a Warrior Monk. 
Source: Jim Channon, The First Earth Battalion (1979), US Military. 


 


Energy Exercises:
Thymus Thump: Your thymus gland is located about 2 inches below K-27, in the center of our chest. It’s a gland that produces T-cells that are critical to our immune system. It will boost your immune system and stimulate your energy. Tap or thump this area for about 15 to 20 seconds, 15-30 times. Use your thumb and all your fingers firmly. As you tap, breathe slowly and deeply, in through your nose and out through your mouth.   Learn about other energy healing exercises too. Integrate this into your work, studying or commute.


K27 Thump is located just below the collarbone on each side of your breastbone.  Tapping or massaging it will strengthen your immune system; boost and restore your overall energy level; reduce fatigue; move lymph; improve focus and memory; keep energy moving forward through all of your meridians. Cross your hands as you thump to help the figure 8 cross over energy pattern from the Brain.  You will want to massage or tap these points frequently. 

CV17 Thump –is the Sea of Qi and also called the Sea of Tranquility.  It is located between the breasts, level with the nipples at the mid-line of your breastbone.  Tapping or massaging it increases energy flow, reduces fatigue, calms the mind and the heart, while reducing stress.
 

A Kirlan photograph of pyramid energy. It enhances meditation.       




In 2009 Hof completed a full marathon ((26.219 mi (42 km)), above the polar circle in Finland, in temperatures close to −20 °C (−4 °F). Dressed in nothing but shorts, Hof finished in 5 hours and 25 minutes.



 
Chakras


Chapter 4: Environmental Harmony

 



The communities with the potential for the highest long-term adaptive capacity are located in what I call the Zones of Habitability. These zones are based on climate change models and predictions plus socio-economic and cultural factors. The map below shows the zones least likely to experience the impending extremes in prolonged drought, storms or flooding that will dominate the world in the coming decades and centuries.  These areas are:
  • Northeast North America through central and Western Canada and Alaska.
  • Eastern Russia and China through Mongolia and Kazakhstan through Scandinavia.
See the colored maps: Joe Romm, Think Progress, New Study Puts the 'Hell' in Hell and High Water: NCAR, Drought Under Global Warming: A Review (2011), available at http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/10/20/206899/ncar-daidrought-under-global-warming-a-review/.




The Northeastern US zone, in my opinion, is the most sustainable zone in the world. This map is based on the Tree of Life sacred geometry. However, the biggest problem is the population density (in New York City, Boston, D.C., and Philadelphia), likely beyond the area’s carrying capacity.
 





Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian mystic and artist, described his masterpiece, Composition VII (1913), as representing humanity on the brink of the Great Epoch of Spirituality, on the brink of Spiritual Evolution.*

*Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of Russia, Part II: Roads to Revolution (2009). Evoking a spiritual resonance in viewer and artist, it’s with a sense of desperation, flurry, urgency, and confusion. Kandinsky described in Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), the creation of art from "an internal necessity" at the apex of the upward-moving spiritual pyramid of humanity, penetrating and proceeding into the future.

Chapter 4: Environmental Harmony








IPCC (2001) graph illustrating the idea of increasing (a) severity and (b) frequency resulting in (c) a new climate with a higher probability of extremes

Redeliniation of Flood Zones






(And GDP is a 1:1 metric for energy consumption).





And arctic methane is only one of about a dozen or so other abrupt “tipping points” that trigger uncontrollable runaway climate change.



And arctic methane is only one of about a dozen or so other abrupt “tipping points” that can trigger uncontrollable runaway climate change.[1]  But the methane bomb is already triggered.


It’s hard to transition from this to Level 1-3 solutions. Individual or even community preparedness for natural disasters, energy and emissions reductions, and relocalization efforts, although very necessary, are completely insufficient to prevent these catastrophic tipping points. 

Efforts to limit and reverse methane and other pollutants’ obnoxious effects must be commensurate to its magnitude—and the magnitude of the methane bomb is 5,000 to 10,000 GtCO2-eq compared to 33 Gt/y total emissions and the 275 Gt budget.




Projected temperature spikes of 3-6°C before 2100 are outside the realm of human experience. This graph shows 90% of Earth’s temperature history, from 542 million years (my) Cambrian Explosion; For context, humans have been evolving about 6my and the 10 thousand year Holocene stability allowed for agriculture and our 5 to 10 thousand-year civilization.  A global average rise in 4˚C is “incompatible with civilization” and 5˚C represents likely human extinction. The expected/predicted change, 2050-2100, is 3-6°C.
Earth acquired its present size, around 4-5 billion years ago. Life originated about 2 billion years ago, but the fossil record starts about 542mya. Graph Source: Open Source System Foundation, Global Warming Natural Cycle, available at http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/natural-cycle.





 

What I call spiritual geoengineering (to differentiate it from industrialized geoengineering) is based on a long and significant history of promising research, ancient traditions, and personal insight.
Studies show that focused meditation causes biophoton photolysis, or chemical reactions in the environment, such as a change in water acidity (pH) and accelerated plant growth. Other studies show that meditation in groups cause larger-scale social and environmental changes. Furthermore, multi-year studies on specific meditations indicate that groups can cause planetary-level effects on solar radiation, for example, by decreasing sunspots by over thirty percent. Thus, meditation is already a known and demonstrable solar radiation management (SRM) technology.

The basic ideas is that daily group meditations focused on environmental harmony can cause large-scale effects for diffusing the methane bomb, reducing carbon dioxide through accelerated photosynthesis, reducing ocean acidity, stabilizing the polar ice caps, preventing catastrophic super storms, and providing other beneficial effects in a way that is safe, inexpensive, and more effective than any proposal for industrial-based geoengineering. 

My hypothesis is that meditation groups can be light-catalysts for methane dissociation, oceanic deacidification, and accelerated photolysis for biosequestration of carbon dioxide. Thus, it should be possible to diffuse the methane bomb, reverse ocean acidfication, and reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases from the current 400+ ppm to pre-industrial levels around 280 ppm, to help stabilize planetary systems.

This is possible because humans radiate photons at a wavelength spectrum that causes photolysis (a chemical reaction, breaking chemical compounds) of atmospheric water and oceanic nitrates (NO3) and nitrites (NO2), dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN)) and nonliving dissolved organic matter (DOM), which are the primary sources for producing hydroxyl (OH) radicals that are the primary cause of both methane dissociation and the reversal of ocean acidity.



Chapter 5: Crisis & Revolution


Sustainability Model
Society and the economy depend on a healthy environment.





A campaign is a strategic and motivational way to organize change activity. It is strategic because it is a way to target effort. It is motivational because it enacts an unfolding story of the hope that we can achieve our objective. As it progresses, we find we can make a difference. Our work acquires the urgency of genuine deadlines. The solidarity of collaborating with others in a common cause energizes us.

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