A spiritual transformation and a planetary transformation are both taking place in our time, hopefully weaving together a way to move through the spiritual and planetary crisis that we are confronting right now.
Let’s take a look at how an acceptance of Spiritual Realism affects these two transformations and how they relate to each other, reinforce each other, and provide guidance for each other. To do that, we need to begin with a reflection on time.
Time
What is time? Sometimes folks will say that time, for humans, is like water for fish. It is the essential medium that we live within – so universal that we use it to interact with events outside of ourselves or inside of ourselves but we don’t pay attention to it as the medium within which the events take place.
We experience time as a succession of present moments, each one emerging out of a predecessor moment and giving rise to a successor moment. Internally, in our experience of time, we remember our past, experience our present, and anticipate our future. Since we don’t experience the past or the future directly, our experience of time is an experience of a brief present moment extending out into the space around us and inward into our inner world (which includes memories and anticipations).
Since our experience is moment by moment, our outer and inner worlds appear to us moment by moment, but that doesn’t mean that everything in our worlds is created out of nothing every instant and dissolves into nothing every instant. Occam’s razor doesn’t have to be very sharp to get rid of that improbable and complicated assumption. The much simpler alternative for understanding the physical space/time Universe moving at speeds slower than the speed of light is to accept that physical time and space are relative. That means that the past is a place that we have already visited but continues to exist even though we aren’t there anymore. The future is a place that already exists even though we haven’t visited it yet.
However, the future is clearly different from the past. Our experience of the future is that there are a number of possibilities that we can choose from. We make our choices in the present. The past is the fixed result of whatever choices we have made and continue to make. So, how does this work?
Alternative Universes
According to one of the more popular current cosmologies, there are many Alternative Universes (perhaps an infinite number) at the cosmological level of reality and at the quantum level of reality. If we accept that this is true, then it also makes sense for Alternative Universes to exist at our human species level of reality as well. The present can be seen as a succession of instants in which we choose from among the Alternative Universes available to us, and, thereby, we establish a fixed past that is the path through those alternative Universes that we have lived.
Now, here is where the Philosophy of Spiritual Realism helps us out. All the alternative Universes exist in the Spiritual Realm, the massless dimensions vibrating at speeds faster than the speed of light. Each moment we are alive we are making choices among future Alternative Universes, Alternative Futures if you will.
What we choose to live out in each of our present moments brings through one set of possibilities out of the full range of Alternative Future possibilities available to us. We manifest this in our present moments as a physical reality, and these moments then take their place as additions to the material tail that extends into our pasts as the extended material reality that is our past as the one path we have taken through the alternative possibilities that existed for us.
Looked at from the perspective of one of our present moments, the faster-than-the-speed-of-light Spiritual Dimension provides a full set of alternative possibilities extending on forward into the future to the moment of our death. The past extends backward from the present moment as a stream of physical actuality back to our birth. This stream of the past has been created by our succession of present moments and the choices we made and actions we took in them, leading up to the present one.
The actual physical past constrains the realm of potentialities in our future. Once we make a choice in our succession of presents, we select one Alternative Future from the Alternative Futures available to us, actualize it in the present, and then pass it on to our next present and all the next presents that constitute our future as the one alternative that we have lived and are living, surrounded by all the ones we didn’t live.
Each moment actualizes an Alternative Future potentiality, transforming it into a manifest physical reality. In each moment we bring an Alternative Future existing in the faster-than-the-speed-of-light Spiritual Domain across the speed-of-light boundary into the material domain. The Alternative Future potentialities are quite real in the faster-than-the-speed-of-light Spiritual Realm and those that do not get actualized into a manifest physical reality continue as a kind of cloud of might-have-been potentialities that surround the stream of our physical pasts.
The range of Alternative Futures that we can access is limited by the structure of our consciousness and by our psycho/physical reality. I can’t pay attention to my breathing with a useful visualization while I’m typing if I haven’t expanded my awareness and learned how to do all that at the same time. Right now, I could be in many different places in Oakland California doing many different things, but I can’t be in New York City without pursuing a specific track of instants that are involved in getting there.
We choose among Alternative Futures in each instant, but these instants combine to make up the larger scale Alternative Futures that we embrace to create the paths that our lives take. And all instants are not created equal. The choices we make in some instants essentially are choices among paths rather than just a choice on a path.
Choosing to get married or take a particular job are, obviously, choices of a different order than choosing what to have for breakfast, even though the same process of choosing among Alternative Futures exists in both cases. As we make our choices, the range of choices among Alternative Futures on a path or among paths evolves, closing some doors and opening others.
An aspect of the art of living well in any given moment is choosing to manifest a physical reality from the field of spiritual potentiality that best conforms to our optimal path. Each moment, every moment, we create a physical reality from the available spiritual potentialities and, hopefully, those physical realities cohere to create the life that we want to be living. Each moment that we live, the spiritual becomes physical through each of us. Each moment, every moment can be seen as a moment of a unique kind of transubstantiation of the spiritual into the physical. That is the sacrament of living in time.
The Alternative Future We Want Already Exists
So, what this means is that the Alternative Future that we want for ourselves and our species and our planet already exists as a spiritual potentiality located along the continuum of time that we haven’t reached yet. From the perspective of that Alternative Future, a fully safe, sustainable, resilient regenerated Earth inhabited by a healthy, prosperous, peaceful species made up of individuals each with Planetary Consciousness already exists in potentia.
Our choices can help to bring a planetary spiritual Alternative Future into physical existence. However, all the other Alternative Futures also exist, and many people are making choices that tend to manifest alternate futures that we don’t want.
The best way to make the future we want fully real in our present and our past is to envision it powerfully and exemplify it effectively.
Through consciousness practices, we can strengthen our ability to bring about the planetary Alternative Future we want and need. We can help get to it by Meditating on it with Mantra and Visualization Meditations. We can even catch true glimpses of it in our Vision Meditations in ways that can offer us guidance.
Consciousness practices can strengthen our ability to manifest a coherent Self and acquire the knowledge and take the actions that are needed. Every time we visualize the planetary Alternative Future we are seeking and meditate on it and learn more about it and act to exemplify it, we make the path to this planetary Alternative Future easier to follow and we strengthen our ability to travel that path. The more of us that do this together and the more powerful those of us who do this become, the stronger and more effective we will become, and the more powerful the Movement for Planetary Transformation will become.
However, inner action is certainly not enough. In order to manifest the Planetary Transformation in material reality, we also have to build the communities, and the businesses, and the political organizations, and the cultural expressions that are examples of Love, Justice and Peace and the Great Transformation. And we have to link these examples together to form the new culture and the new society and the new politics and the new economy that are the different aspects of the Great Transformation so that people learn to live in harmony with themselves, each other, and the Earth.
