My Beliefs

First published in Common Ground Magazine

I feel it appropriate to share some of my core beliefs, as they inform my writing and my understanding of what is happening in the world.

First, I believe that All is One, and the whole Universe is a unity, including both material and spiritual realms. How could it be otherwise? If there were two, they would relate to each other and be part of a whole.

Next, I believe there is a spiritual realm which is as real as the material realm. I know this from personal experience of grief, surrender, prayer, and deep healing, and from extensive reading of the literature of paranormal and psychic experience.

I believe the spiritual realm is the foundation of all that exists. There is just one singularity, of which the material realm is one expression.

I use the term spiritual to describe what I believe to be the foundation of all existence. I believe that our existence is built on this foundation, which sometimes we can catch maybe a glimpse of through acts of kindness, prayer, meditation, surrender, music or art, when our ego-shells take a back seat. We can also experience a deceptive sense of union when we link with a false whole that excludes others, such as Nazism, fundamentalism or nationalism.

I see consciousness as a doorway through which we perceive reality. I believe that everything has consciousness - every atom, mountain and tree; every bacterium that lives under your fingernails; every cell in your body.

This has implications for my understanding of evolution. I love the Darwinian explanation, since it demonstrates our deep biological unity, but I don’t think it is complete enough. I believe that evolution is a spiritual as well as a biological journey.

I believe that the Universe is connected by attraction, and that all life seeks unity at a higher level. When atoms are attracted to each other, they fall in love, creating molecules. When molecules fall in love, they create organisms. When we humans fall in love, we find loving co-existence, transcending our ego-shells, until we try to dominate each other, pushing us back into our ego-shells and making us wonder where the love went.

I believe that evolution expresses itself through a deep movement towards wholeness. This both gives us genetic change, and drives all life to seek to seek wholeness, and to maximize its opportunity to flourish. This is the impulse that makes people work for peace, justice, and peace with Nature. I call it syntropy, the universal drive towards fulfillment and wholeness, the balancing principle of entropy that says all material systems tend towards disorganization and collapse. Entropy may simply be the absence of syntropy, when the desire to live disappears.

I believe we are tantalizingly close to reaching global union and putting an end to war. Throughout history, people have attached their identities to a tribe or clan. When they find community with members of another tribe, they eventually cease trying to dominate them and attach their identities to a nation. When this happens by conquest, it usually takes a generation or two for the anger to wear off, before the larger union is accepted.

When the process is repeated, driven by the deep syntropic quest for unity, it leads to international union. Despite terrorism and other conflicts, we are very close to this final goal. When the majority of Americans abandon their belief that they have a God-given right to dominate the world and join the rest of the world as equal partners, we will finally put an end to war.

I believe that this progressive widening of our consciousness is a fundamental evolutionary drive, and that we are deeply pre-programmed not only to discover unity between all peoples, but also to end injustice, to live in harmony with Nature, to seek personal fulfillment – and to go on to discover amazing things.

Finally, I believe that the crisis we face today, as we stand on the threshold of both global union and global ecological catastrophe, is so enormous and yet so exciting that it calls every one of us to stand up, and say “Count me in”.