Epoch Shift

Individual and collective transformation

In these extraordinary times that humans are going through with multiple crises such as wars, political upheavals, economic miseries, pandemics, natural disasters etc., it would be useful for people who are seriously interested in looking at what we can do both individually and collectively to come together in a coherent space with a two fold intent:

1. Facilitate inner transformation of the egoic mind that each one of us carry in our own unique ways.

2. Enable any outer work that can empower people and systems to aid and support this transformation.

The egoic mind always operating in a win-lose paradigm plays itself out in our daily lives in ways small and big, subtle and gross causing many conflicts due to greed, jealousy, anger etc. And it is the same egoic mind ever playing a zero sum game that operates in the nation-state leaders, tech giants etc who wield an enormously asymmetric power while lacking the wisdom to wield it. This can only inexorably lead to existential threats to our health, environment, economic well being and essentially every aspect of our lives.

So it is abundantly clear that if the status quo continues, our children of the next generation will be growing into an exponentially scarier world. There are many experts in different fields predicting apocalyptic events due to the completely unsustainable path we are on. And it may even be a necessary cleansing needed to bring some balance back to the world at large. But it also means that those who are parents, educators or generally even concerned about the coming generations have a profound responsibility to do what we can to bring about a new way of living both in our individual lives and in the collective environment we share — whether it be education, politics, economics or culture.

The high order bit is always the inner transformation at the individual level and it is only upon this anchor that any meaningful outer work can flower. But any outer work done with the right consciousness of sharing and caring and not out of seeking any personal credit can in turn help with the inner journey, thus creating a positive feedback loop. It is greatly rewarding to explore that space of synergy between the inner and the outer which is ultimately the same one movement of Life.

There are three key axioms necessary for humans to make an epoch shift toward harmony within and without.

1. Self-awareness is central: We may come from different religious or spiritual traditions and have different rituals and meditation practices. But if it is not complemented by a natural process of self observation and self awareness, then all other practices can only be fragmentary in time and space — as in “I meditate / chant / read 30 minutes every morning” thus fragmenting time or “I go to silent retreats in ashram X / pray in temple Y / meditate in shrine Z” thus fragmenting space. While having a regular practice or visiting certain places can help tremendously in boosting one’s inwardness, if there is no self-awareness during the rest of time and space, it can very easily degenerate into just an escape. Self-awareness is simply being aware of how am I functioning in any moment, in any interaction. We spend our entire days relating to people and objects so we cannot escape from relationships. It is all too vital to be constantly aware as to the way we are relating because that truly reveals who we are, behind the facade of our knowledge and projections. We relate to people with various agenda most of which we are not even conscious of — seeking approval or praise, comparing to feel proud or envious, wanting to impress, projecting a very rational or humorous persona to hide behind etc. All of this stems out of the basic separative egoic mind that says “what’s in it for me” with every interaction. To be aware of this activity of the ego is already to transcend it as a witness. And the beauty of this self observation and awareness is that it can happen wherever we are and whoever we are with, so there is no need to divorce living and being meditative.

2. Identity is regressive: A deeply pernicious way in which the ego mind functions is by replacing the me versus rest paradigm with an us versus them paradigm thus making it appear very noble, while in fact it is just another avatar of the same separative mindset. This causes us to feel strong identity with nation, race, religion, language or even a guru, practice etc and this is again a deeply fragmentary process. We can see very clearly if we step back just for a moment that every human being shares the same mind. Jealousy, anger, greed or lust and similarly compassion, care, kindness and love are common to all humans. We go through the same emotions, feelings and projections because we all swim in the same waters. To feel that one group of people is superior to another and therefore the other can be vanquished or even looked down upon only comes out of an extension of the “me”. The simplest and highest benediction given by the ancients is “sarve janAH sukhino bhavantu” (May all beings be happy) which makes no distinction of any form. It is important that we are alert and aware anytime we descend into a separative identity of any kind and just let that awareness naturally pull ourselves out of it.

3. Synergy is health: This is the natural corollary of the first two axioms but worth spelling out separately because it is so unlike the way we function mostly. This is the crux of the epoch shift — to move from “what’s in it for me” to “how can we synergize with all”, to move from win-lose to win-win. While it may seem very unnatural from our current standpoint, it is actually the most natural way of functioning of our own biology. Every cell in our body functions exactly in this synergistic manner. It takes what is necessary to survive healthily and provides what is necessary for all the cells around so that a collection of cells can form an intricately complex organ like the heart or the brain, thus making the sum way greater than the parts. If, on the other hand, an individual cell consumes way more than what is necessary and starts replicating itself at the expense of other cells, that is the very definition of a cancer cell which eventually destroys itself while taking down the whole body with it. Each individual is a cell of the body of this earth and our present functioning is exactly like cancer cells, so it’s no wonder we are staring at an abyss collectively. If we are to heal ourselves and the world around, we have to move from being a cancer cell to a healthy cell that thrives in synergy and makes the whole body healthy.

In summary, the epoch shift that is necessary for humanity to transcend the crises at all levels is a shift within:

From Scarcity to Abundance
From Taking to Sharing
From Competing to Collaborating
From Centralized to Distributed
From Rights to Responsibilities
From Habit to Alertness
From Me to Us
From ‘I am the body’ to ‘I am’

Focusing on any one of the above helps with all, individually first and then collectively in increasingly larger groups.