Tag Archives: paradigm shift

Connecting, Uncategorized, Vision

Avatar

In spite of the crowds,  I did decide to go see Avatar.  It was a three hour film. One way I measure a film’s success is if I notice the length and in this case I found this film more engaging then Sherlock Holmes, a two hour film that seemed more like three.  I am sure part of the engagement was the wonder and color of the planet, Pandora.  I loved the idea of a people so in tune with the land that every step is linked to the life around them.

Okay so this is not an original story by any means.  Natives in any major continent all have histories of being linked into the land and natural rhythms of the earth and all of these aboriginal peoples have been dominated and killed for access to the lands.  There’s also nothing new about foreigners finding some precious metal, resource or nugget that is worth tons of money but would require the destruction of the planet to mine .  Finally the fight that eventually takes place is not new either.  Indeed Avatar is the same story we keep repeating over and over, for real and in stories like Fern Gully and Worship Down.  yet, we never learn.

Avatar means teacher, but I am not sure the lead character lives up to the title.  Maybe Grace did.  But she died.  Our main man did change.  But I was wishing for some other path then fight war with war.  I get he was only defending their home which by any human standard is perfectly acceptable, but isn’t there something else.  Here is a planet that is so interconnected that eventually all the animals come to fight off the bad guys.  What if instead of fighting them off that interconnecting link was used to shift minds.  I know it is not Hollywood but I am still looking for a new storyline.

I liked Avatar.  I was cheering for him and the natives.  But I left wishing there could have been a more unique and novel path for resolving differences.  I have to believe there is something – a paradigm shift that is available to us and all living beings. Often that type of magic arrives through remembering or imagining and then sharing the stories through the present day medium which in today’s world, is 3D film.  Avatar had many elements of that possibility; telepathy, interconnection, blending of different species and of course the age old ingredient love.  However, in the end the story still didn’t provide a new paradigm.

I am still waiting and will keep trying to remember and imagine that there is a path other then violence that leads us home!

Vision

Collective Consciousness: Montana Style

A few years back I had a chance to listen to Bruce Lipton speak.  Bruce is a macro-biologist who thinks quite differently then the rest of his peers about what is really going on inside cells.  At that time he was focused on our beliefs and how our beliefs impact the cells in our body.  The idea that  basically cells are either defending or growing and that our beliefs are what give the signal to the cell.  Most macro-biologist believe genetics has more weight in the growth/defend life cycle of cells but Lipton has been challenging that idea for quite a while.

Now he has gotten interested in humankind as a whole.  His latest book is looking at humanity as a living being.  I quite enjoyed some of his ideas.  As someone who ‘miraculously’ healed from cancer, I could easily relate to his idea that healing comes through a paradigm shift in thinking.  I also loved the idea of applying what we are learning about a single cell and an individual to the broader human kind system.  The idea that our world is in a crisis is easy to accept.  It is also pretty clear that trying to ‘fix’ the crisis or attack the problem by cutting out the ‘bad’ parts is not effective.  His answer is simply that we must shift our thinking from that of being individually conscious to becoming collectively conscious.

Now this is not really a new way of thinking. New age folks and various other indegenious people have been thinking this way a long time.  However, it is pretty new and unique in the world of science.

I am also thinking this idea of collective consciousness is not quite what most of us are thinking it is.  I hear a lot of people talk about oneness and collective consciousness and often interpret what I hear as a need for us to all harmonize and come together in some unified concrete way.  However,  if Lipton’s idea has any validity and we look at how our cells work together in the body,  I would say it’s not about being more alike and unifying in that way.  It is more about being okay being different and unifying through our differences.

Montana is an example of what I mean.  Montana is a state that has more variety of beliefs and opinions then many large cities.  In any little town like Whitefish or Butte you can find diversity in thought and opinion in any cafe or bar and instead of fighting and separation there seems to be a Montana code:  you accept me and I’ll accept you and let’s live in this great space together. Now I think that is movement towards collective consciousness and is something worth considering on a broader level.

I have my thoughts about how people need to change; however, I am pretty clear that would be the hardest and least effective path to creating a global shift. That was Lipton’s point.  Cells either grow or defend – it’s the same with people.  Try to force someone to change and all they’ll do is defend; accept them and who knows.  May be it is okay that we are all different.  Maybe that’s the way it was designed.  Once we are okay with that,  well, then we could live in this great space together!