Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Becoming Responsible for Evolution

[Image source]


One of my favorite exercises from Quaker prayer gatherings is: "Let the next sentence out of your mouth be from your very highest self." Everybody gets quiet at that point! But that's the kind of attitude we want to bring to these dialogues. New structures in consciousness are being laid down right now--they are just faint footprints on the face of the cosmos. So your behavior, to the extent that you live up to your highest, is actually creating structures that future humanity will inhabit. Therefore, choose your acts very, very carefully. Make sure that the next action you take comes from your highest self. Make sure that the next thing that you say comes from your highest self. Then there's hope for the future. Those structures are already being laid down. God is laying them down; Spirit is laying them down--through us. So we have to become appropriate vehicles for Spirit to lay down the very structures that humanity is going to inhabit. And if we don't, that is a guilt we will carry with us for eternity.

-Ken Wilber, speaking to an audience in Denver, CO, last fall--the first public "Guru and Pandit" Q&A with Wilber and Andrew Cohen.

3 comments:

Steve said...

Make our next words and deeds come from our highest self. What a wonderful idea! It sounds so obvious and simple that you wonder why everyone hasn't been saying and doing it long before this. But maybe it's such an obvious and simple idea that it's been utterly elusive until a sage like Wilber comes along and expresses it aloud. Now that he has done so, let's see what we can do with it.

william harryman said...

Nagarjuna,

Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Yeah, it is a nice thought isn't it--so filled with common sense. If we could begin to practice that concept, the world would be a much better place. It starts with us.

Peace,
Bill

* said...

I just saw your Robinson Jeffers post...thank you for that...great poet...