In the New Age, the answer to “What Next?“ is as simple as it is formidable. We aim for nothing less than the physical rescue of the planet, and the spiritual rescue of all who live upon it.
Not so long ago, this New Age declaration caused quite a bit of eye-rolling and accusations of messianic delusions. But today, with peak oil problems, terrorism and global warming an ever-accelerating reality, we don’t have the luxury of eye-rolling anymore. Any part of the population struggling to work together and take responsibility to avert planetary disaster should be given whatever support and encouragement they can get.
New Age idealism is very clear about what is necessary to transform society: We must recognize our unity with spirit, and through spirit, our unity with each other.
As we have seen from our map of spiritual growth, this recognition usually only becomes possible for us when we reach Stage Four in the spiral of our spiritual development, and only becomes tangibly real for us in Stage Five. Thus, a true transformation of society will require all of us to continue up the spiral. Not only do we have to help ourselves grow to higher stages, we also have to make it possible for everyone else to grow.
I've said it before, and because it is so important, I will say it again-- an understanding of the spiral of spiritual development is a vital step in the transformation of self and society.
“Awareness drives development,” writes Bill Harris, founder of the Centerpointe Institute. “Whatever you are immersed in, you are unaware of, like a fish in water. When you do become aware (if you do), your perspective changes. It expands.” The more you become aware of where you are, the more likely you will be able to transcend it.
All change is preceded by a change in our mental maps. Learning to see the world from a developmental perspective would be a revolutionary change that would create the conditions for transformation. It is essential for all idealists, New Age or otherwise, to become familiar with the stages of development and help make it “common knowledge” throughout our culture.
The yin and the yang of change
The New Age approach to transformation has a dual focus -- interior and exterior, individual and community.
We consider the “big picture” of cultural paradigms, and how to change society as a whole through big causes such as environmentalism and the peace movement. But we also focus on the individual, and how to change the self through contemplation and study.
In the New Age of the 1970s, said Spangler, the big picture was definitely the “star” of the movement. But the scale of the big picture often left many feeling overwhelmed and disempowered. That is one reason why in the 1980s, the pendulum swung the other way -- toward the personal.
In fact, the pendulum swung so far to the individual that, as we have seen, it pushed us all off the edge of the movement entirely. The big picture, the exterior, got lost. New Age spirituality is now all lopsided toward the individual, and we are suffering for it.
A revitalized New Age must restore the balance between individual and community. We must recognize that they are two sides of the same coin, and equally important. The New Age, Spangler said, must “enable us to blend the spiritual and worldly aspects of our lives and see them as one.”
Idealism contends that source of change is within the self, so we certainly need to continue to work on growth, to minimize the ego and connect with soul. But we must also make an effort to move beyond ourselves and connect with others, to discover ourselves in context with the greater universe.
To focus on one half of the equation at the expense of the other is like to trying to walk with one leg. We won’t get far.
“The power to change is entwined with the power to be changed,“ Spangler adds. If we focus only on the exterior and neglect to do the inner work of spiritual development, our work for the community is hampered. If we focus only on the self and neglect to reach out to others and work for a better society, then we hamper our ability to grow personally.
In order to help ourselves to grow, we must help others to grow as well. If we are truly going to change the world for the better, we must develop a personal spirituality that is also socially engaged.
Great expectations
So let’s say we do get down to the serious business of transforming self and society. How long before we make that “quantum leap” to a New Age and harmony for all?
Many New Age writers see a mass paradigm shift as a natural progression of our evolution toward consciousness. Some even believe it to be inevitable. They say we will progress until ego at last opens its eyes to the primacy of soul and acts in accordance to its unity with all. They say science and technology will open the ego's eyes to spirit and trod carefully across the planet, helping to heal the damage it once wreaked.
Of course, this idea isn’t exactly original with today‘s New Age, or even with idealism. Michael Grosso, in “The Millenium Myth,” says the idea that we will reach the end of history to see the dawn of a golden age has long been part of human mythologies. “At the heart of the Myth is the idea that history -- Our Story -- is a journey with a goal, a drama with a climax.”
But while inspiring in the short run, images of magical tipping points and overnight transformations do not serve us well for the long run. “Such images encourage unreasonable expectations that, when not fulfilled, lead to disillusionment and anger,” says Spangler. “The New Age needs a healthy dose of realism, particularly in grasping the depth of time, work, compassion, loving and communication necessary to move the world into healthier and more holistic directions….We need an appropriate spirit of idealism and vision that prepares us for the both the transformative leap and the transformative hike.”
I wholeheartedly believe that New Age idealism can change the world, but only if we commit to it as an everyday process, not a future reward. Creating the New Age is not the work of a special time, but of ordinary time, today in our ordinary lives. It is the patient and steady work of clearing the vision, and exchanging old habits for new habits that take the whole into account, and evolving up through the spiral of spiritual development.
It is difficult, Spangler added, not to “crave the great event that will liberate us from the mundane.“ But real transformation is “not dependent on great events, only on shifts of perception and mindfulness. When we focus too much on the great events that seem to lie on our horizons, then we overlook the immediate events through which the New Age may be seeking to enter our lives.”
As we go to work on creating a future for our children, we need to remind ourselves that New Age is not a specific future, or a specific event. The New Age is already right here, right now. All we have to do is begin to inhabit it today.
The source of change
In any effort to change the world, we can all agree there is an overwhelming amount to do. Wars need to be stopped, the environment needs to be protected, the hungry need to be fed. With so many tasks before us needing urgent attention, how do we know where to start?
The great “changers” of history, those who are celebrated far and wide for transforming their one corner of the world, tell us that change starts with the self. To create a “beloved community,” wrote Martin Luther King, “will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”
King followed the example of Gandhi, who realized, said one of his biographers, “a person can be an ‘instrument of peace,’ a catalyst of understanding, by getting himself out of the way,” by “reducing himself to zero.” In other words, Gandhi was able to be so effective in the world because he was able to set aside his ego and connect with the unity of soul.
All doing flows from being. Yes, feeding the hungry is a vital task, and one we must undertake immediately, along with other good works. But even if I spent my every waking moment collecting food for the hungry, I’d never gather enough to feed them all. Widespread hunger is a symptom of a defective society that doesn’t recognize its unity, a society that believes it is the natural order of things to marginalize the many in order to increase the wealth and privilege of the few.
If we are truly to end hunger, we must raise our culture's center of spritual gravity up the spiral of development -- from a conservative, materialistic belief system that creates hunger to a holistic belief system that values everyone and distributes resources for the benefit of the whole.
“The only conceivable way of bringing about a reconstruction of our world on new lines is first of all to become new men ourselves under the old circumstances, and then as a society in a new frame of mind,” wrote Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer. “Everything else is more or less wasted labor, because we are thereby building not on the spirit, but on what is merely external.”
By changing ourselves, we really do change the world. The real question is, how do we change ourselves?
A number of idealistic traditions tell us that personal change is the result of five disciplines:
- contemplative practice
- study and knowledge
- spiritual community
- right behavior
- good works
All these disciplines are equally important in bringing about our transformation, both on a personal and collective level, and if we ignore any one area, we will inhibit conditions for true growth. But if we work with these disciplines consistently over time, with true commitment, we may find ourselves undergoing a very great transformation indeed.
“I have not a shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have,” wrote Gandhi, “if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.”
Go to Contemplation: The Technology of Transformation.
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