Late to the evolutionary party

Let’s be clear about this; we have arrived late to the evolutionary party. In a now well-known analogy that places the evolution of Earth within a single year calendar - from Jan 1st to Dec 31st – with each day of the year equal to 12 million years, then the first form of life, a simple bacterium, arose sometime in February. More complex life-forms arrived throughout Spring and Summer, and fishes came to the party around late November 20th. Then the bouncers – the dinosaurs - finally arrived around December 10th, only to disappear drunk on Christmas Day. It wasn’t until the afternoon of December 31st that the first of our recognizable human ancestors showed-up (typically late!). So when did we - homo sapiens sapiens – gate-crash the party? Well, we knocked on the door around 11.45pm; which makes all recorded history taking place within the final minute of the year. We are, in all respects, a rapid evolutionary phenomenon. And it’s going to get a whole lot more rapid. Which means we need to ditch the ‘old mind’ as fast as possible before we take too many wrong decisions or succumb to mounting insecurities. Our ‘old mind’ was set up to be on the look-out for insecurities and fear-situations: it was our survival apparatus. Yet this apparatus has continued to be reinforced through social conditioning, resulting in limited perceptual capacity. What is required now is a reinvigoration of vision: everything that we have culturally achieved has been the result of human vision. The human imagination is a primary force; it allows intervention of energies and guidance. It is both creative and destructive, and through it we are able to manifest the ‘world’ we envision. We now need to upgrade our visionary capacity, to open up more fully to inspired thoughts and guidance. To fail to do so will be a great loss for our species as these are critical times for the instinctive perceptual faculties, and we need to bring these ‘organs’ into being. As the revered Persian poet Jalalludin Rumi once wrote:

New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity.

Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may
increase your perception.

Every change requires a change in consciousness; this has always been the case. Many of us are now slowly beginning to recognize this fact and to cooperate with the upgrade. The transition stage we are to experience in the grander evolutionary cycle will likewise affect the evolution of human consciousness, and may result in new capacities being catalyzed into emergence. Yet at the same time, it is important that we ourselves participate in an effort to shift our thinking patterns – to develop a new ‘mind-set’. If a person’s mind-set is rigidly fixed into the ‘old patterns’ of thinking, then these perceptions will feel threatened by drastic change. It may even try to resist strongly, as it fights to retain a familiar environment where it is ‘business as usual’. Yet the 21st Century will not be a place for ‘business as usual’; it will be a new epoch and as such it deserves a corresponding consciousness.