The word noetic derives from the Greek nous, meaning mind, intelligence, or inner knowing. The Greeks are responsible for offering the advice, “Know thyself.”
Photo by Mike Smith, courtesy of the selfcentered Tour.
When a friend first suggested I read Eat, Pray, Love, I balked. Having just returned from a three-month sabbatical in Northern India, I felt I didn’t need to read about someone else’s journey there. It would only incite envy, since Elizabeth Gilbert turned her life-at-a-crossroads crisis into a blockbusting bestseller while one newspaper article and a blog was the best I could manage. Plus, I’d already read enough “spiritual” books to last the rest of my lifetimes. But after the fortieth friend/acquaintance/colleague raved about the book, I caved, determined to be the first person on the planet not to relish it. I failed, of course, and I dare anyone who has ever dined, dated or doubted themselves not to like it.
“I would actually avoid any title with the word ‘pray’ in it,” says Oakland-based fashion consultant Tracy Miller. “But eating and loving, I’m very interested in.” Miller discovered that it wasn’t the pasta in Italy or the lover in Bali that intrigued her most. “What I identified with was the search for self. I struggle with being my own spiritual counsel. Eat, Pray, Love validated my journey towards understanding who I am and what I have to offer myself and the world,” Miller says.
Elizabeth Gilbert, although a talented and accomplished author, was by no means a household name before Eat, Pray, Love was published. Her extraordinary success and exposure — appearances on Oprah and NBC’s Today show, speaking engagements across North America, favorable reviews in the New York Times, Miami Herald and just about everywhere else — are all the more remarkable considering meditation and mystics are not ordinarily super hyped subjects. But part of what makes Gilbert’s memoir irresistible is her ability to disclose desire for a spiritual experience that is less cosmic and more down-to-earth.
Her timing is perfect. With the green movement reaching critical mass — corner bodegas stocking recycled toilet paper and organic produce, year-long waiting lists for hybrids, network TV shows like Las Vegas airing special eco-themed episodes, Al Gore winning an Academy Award and Nobel prize — Americans seem ready to take their growing concern for and care of the environment and expand it to a deeper understanding of how everything on this earth is interconnected. We already have the technology to end global warming, achieve energy independence and live in harmony with the earth. Now all we need is the willingness to use those tools. That means giving up not only conveniences, but also our sense of entitlement. We’ll have to become less self-centered and more concerned with society as a whole — states of being that some consider a spiritual awakening. If we’re going to get there in time, then consciousness just may be the next green.
Green opens the door
Before the birth of her daughter Ruby three years ago, San Francisco-based hair stylist Sherri Wheeler didn’t give going green much thought, beyond basic recycling. But, like many Gen Xers embracing parenthood, concern for her child’s wellbeing motivated her to become a more informed consumer. Wanting to know the origins of the products she buys — from the cotton in Ruby’s t-shirts to the chemicals in her applesauce and sunscreen — led to an increasing awareness of issues that stretch beyond Wheeler’s backyard. “I realized there’s more than just me and my family out there,” she says. Recently, Wheeler began practicing meditation as a way to stay centered and also deepen her feelings of connection to the world. Her interest in meditation, she says, “sort of happened naturally.”
The shift from thinking green to thinking about your place in the larger world and your impact on humankind is inevitable, says San Francisco-based healing practitioner Elizabeth Lutfy. Caring for the environment leads to greater self-care, which leads to deeper levels of concern for society. “Green is spirituality. Paying attention to nature comes from spiritual awareness,” Lutfy says. “The next level is to move from the “Me, Me, Me” version of spirituality to service and altruism. And I think, as a country, we’re doing that. It’s the hundredth monkey theory — as spiritual consciousness sweeps through, it’s bound to hit everybody.” This consciousness, Lutfy believes, can save the planet.
But consciousness is inauthentic without action. Regina Leffers of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, has been meditating every day for the past thirty years. Cervical cancer was her impetus. She says that in practicing meditation she has had the experience of feeling no separation between herself and the entire planet. “It’s not something I get all the time,” says Leffers. “But the experience is really incredible and intense.” While writing her dissertation for a Ph.D. in philosophy, she helped her brother Dan start a construction company in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. During the early years of developing that company she and Dan occasionally encountered difficulty in obtaining materials, including wood. They realized that “we were rapidly approaching a time when the natural resources of the earth would be fairly scarce.”
The inner knowing that Leffers was refining in her meditation practice helped her begin to understand that the environment itself is “part of us.” Conventional buildings — running and maintaining them — she says, use up tremendous amounts of energy. Spotting an opportunity to merge her business with the environmental goals cultivated through her spiritual practice, Leffers determined to launch a sustainable commercial construction company. “Green building is one way of taking care of the environment,” she says. Five years later, Leffers is now the director for the Center of the Built Environment at Indiana University-Purdue University, Ft. Wayne.
Apocalypse now?
Denizens of the new consciousness movement have a slew of challenges ahead. Some scientists estimate that up to 70 percent of the world’s population lacks access to reliably potable water. Southeast Asia is in danger of running out of clean, disease-free water by 2015. Melting glaciers, disappearing snow on Kilimanjaro and in the Himalayas, and oil spills that destroy beaches, food supply and wildlife are regular occurrences. Massive deforestation is imperiling biodiversity. And our lack of respect for our planet is mirrored in our disregard for each other — most poignantly in regions like Darfur, Sierra Leone and the Middle East.
Our nation is currently at war with two countries and threatening a third. Pakistan, which is run by a despot, has nuclear weapons. And despite all of this, there are too many people on the planet, living too long and leaving too many carbon footprints behind. Without a quick collective spiritual awakening, humanity may be doomed.
Our bleak fate was foretold centuries ago. Or at least that’s the interpretation some ascribe to the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar, which infamously ends on December 21, 2012 at 11:11 a.m. GMT — the day of apocalypse.
But James O’Dea, President of the Institute of Noetic* Sciences (IONS), a nonprofit membership organization located in Northern California that uses rigorously scientific methodology to conduct cutting-edge research into the potential and powers of consciousness, offers a different perspective on 2012. It’s not a death, he says, but a rebirth — into a new way of living.
Evolutionary breakthrough, says O’Dea, is seemingly preceded by “deep, deep collapse.” Consider the period following the Holocaust, during which the United Nations was established and a universal declaration of human rights emerged. The current state of the world could be considered ripe for a global upheaval.
“At this moment we have a huge confluence of factors that are about the end of a particular era,” O’Dea explains. “We’re caught in an endless loop of war. We’re caught in a loop of religious dogmas that are plainly irrational and that are exacerbated by media fantasy and distraction. These conditions are extremely dangerous.” O’Dea points out that the word “apocalypse” in addition to being defined as a cataclysmic event and the triumph of good over evil, also means “revelation.”
Whether or not humanity is headed towards Revelation may be foreshadowed by the upcoming presidential elections here. According to Caroline Myss, consciousness author, educator and creator of the new CD, The Sacred Contract of America: Fulfilling the Vision of Our Mystic Founders, our nation is on a respirator, a situation we as citizens have allowed to happen through our complacency. “The whole idea of being a conscious culture went out the window. We are as unconscious as it gets,” Myss laments. “The only thing we’ve become conscious about is our own needs. And in our narcissism, we make the assumption that the quality of life will take care of itself. And it doesn’t.”
Myss contends that nations, like individuals, have “sacred contracts,” destinies they were put on this earth to fulfill, with certain nations such as the U.S. playing a “pivotal role in the evolution of humanity.” Her assertion is not arrogant, she says, but “passionately patriotic.” The upcoming presidential elections offer us the opportunity to begin that process. We can choose a leader who has a proven commitment to steering our country towards peace. But electing him (or her) requires awareness. Consciousness gives us the ability to see that suffering anywhere — as in war — impacts everyone everywhere. It’s simply the realization that we are all one.
Generation Conscious
Despite the dreary state of national and international affairs and the strong threat that the next administration will be more or less the same as the current one, signs that Americans are approaching a new age of enlightenment are increasingly cropping up. We spend about $3 billion a year on yoga-related activities and products. You can’t walk a block in a major American city without running into a yoga studio. Ministers, medical journals, athletes and CEOs tout the benefits of meditation. As part of stress reduction programs, hospitals offer mindfulness meditation classes. According to the Washington Post, some 10 million Americans claim to meditate. Meditation hits om for kids, too. Film director David Lynch’s charitable foundation created a Consciousness-based Education program that sponsors Transcendental Meditation (TM) training for educators and students. A teacher in one San Francisco high school claims that suspension rates have fallen by 50 percent since the initiation of the TM program.
Baby boomers started dabbling in meditation back in the Sixties after the Beatles studied TM with its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in Rishikesh, India. Gen Xers have grown up witnessing Madonna evolve from the material girl to a Kabbalah-quoting mom who credits yoga for her perfect body and meditation for a peaceful mind. Now, millennials have their own role model.
Twenty-five year-old Max Simon — son of David Simon, medical director and co-founder of the famed Chopra Center for Wellbeing — has spent the last four years traveling around the country teaching yoga and meditation. Disappointed that no one in the 20- to 30-year-old age group showed up for his classes, he wondered if the younger generation is disinterested in consciousness or if consciousness isn’t presented in a way that they can relate to. Deciding on the latter, in November, Simon launched the website getselfcentered.com, a project designed to make meditation more palatable to his peers.
“My vision is to inspire one million people to join me in spending just a little time meditating everyday. If we could do that, we’d live in a much better world,” Simon says. He’s developed a training program for meditation teachers — or “Awareness Architects,” as he’s dubbed them. Simon’s coolness quotient ratcheted up immediately when APL of hip-hop’s Black Eyed Peas learned the getselfcentered technique and agreed to be featured on the website.
The Internet is a key meeting space for the new consciousness movement. Revenue for Beliefnet.com — which won the 2007 National Magazine Award for “Online General Excellence,” beating out fellow finalists ESPN.com and Slate.com — has risen by 50 percent over the past four years, according to an estimate from the New York Times. The Institute for Noetic Studies has it’s own online outreach campaign, OneMinuteShift.com, a website offering snippets of video wisdom accompanied by music. Featured on the site is author Marianne Williamson, world-renowned lecturer on spiritual, personal and political issues (all of them being interconnected, after all), who claims that if a mere 11 percent of the planet’s citizens reach a certain level of consciousness, all of humanity will take a quantum leap to the next level.
A mere 11 percent doesn’t seem like too much to ask. But not all pundits see the current signposts as evidence we’re headed in that direction. David Korten, Seattle-based author of the bestselling When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, is tentative about naming a new consciousness movement. While Korten concedes that some societal shift is happening, he is particularly concerned by the number of Americans who believe our nation is the most advanced, democratic and benevolent in the world — a mindset he calls “delusional.” That delusion, he says, “reveals a monumental lack of national self-awareness.”
Korten, however, remains hopeful that enough of us will wake up in time to dramatically change our behavior in the world before it’s too late. To do that we must “turn to a cooperative foreign policy committed to an equitable sharing of earth’s resources, restore a domestic ethic of frugality, and learn to live within our own means.” We cannot afford to continue to sit back and watch events in our world unfold. We must act.
Traveling to a remote town in the Himalayas helped me experience reprieve from my own rampant self-centeredness. Asked repeatedly to explain why Americans allow the Bush administration to retain its power, I was forced to confront my own complacency. And while I haven’t spent much time in Indian ashrams, my spiritual quest led me to the mountains of India where I enjoyed trekking, skiing, paragliding and rafting, all of which were spiritual experiences for me. I returned with a deeper appreciation of nature’s gifts, which has inspired me to behave more responsibly. I may still struggle to maintain a regular meditation practice, and I almost always choose jogging over yoga, but I know there’s more than one path to the top of the mountain.
And so does fellow traveler, Elizabeth Gilbert. During her Eat, Pray, Love appearance on “Oprah” she stressed that we “don’t have to travel around the world” to deepen our spiritual connection and consciousness. She says we should just ask ourselves the questions she was asking herself: “What to do I want to do? How can I find peace within myself? What can I do about the craziness of the world?”
Writer Lynn Braz lives, works, plays and prays in the Bay Area.