The BIG Picture

While the East was steeped in spirituality, which sustained it for millennia, the West had been on a different, though ultimately complimentary journey. Our destined path was a materialistic one. While this journey had cut off any vestige of a spiritual tradition – with only the distortions of the Churches to retain a hint of our spiritual heritage – we were developing in important ways. We were creating the independent thought and judgement that comes with a capitalist, individualist culture. Ironically this is what would pave the way for an emerging spirituality. Eastern spirituality was imported into a culture and to individuals who, because of their independent make-up, had no choice but to personalize it. This was a key turning point of the West’s contribution to humankind’s evolution. The power of individualism that was forged in the depths of materialism now - with an impulse towards spiritual growth - can be turned towards the transformation of our own lives, connecting with others in empowering ways and halting the destruction of the Earth. The scientific outlook, which was the epitome of materialistic expression, led to an atomisation of life – the small picture. We were led into a mechanical concept of the human body, mind and emotions and we lost the gestalt – the health and wellbeing that comes with integration and wholeness. The same applied to our planet. All in all, we got swept up in ‘having’ at the expense of our ‘being’. But in the course of all this, regardless of the corruption of what we deem important, as individuals we have been in the process of strengthening the core of our being, preparing ourselves for an important evolutionary assignment. As we strengthen the self, even though the pathway leads through the trials of greed and selfishness and the resulting isolation, we are moving in important new directions. As with quantum physics, where some scientists eventually come to a conviction of divine forces at work, the irony of the path of individualism is that eventually we find our relationship to others. We are, in the end, all made up of the same stuff. There comes a time when we no longer feel like an individual. We will experience, like all of the stories you read here testify and as all the mystics of East and West describe, 'at one' with all things. It may seem a great contradiction that it’s through the path of individualism that we come to understand our interrelationship with all that exists, yet for the Western consciousness that’s the way it is. And that’s the gift the West has to offer the world. The great dragon of individualism, which gives rise to capitalism and greed and ‘me-me-me’, will eventually bring us to a realisation that at the depths of ‘me’, we begin to experience ‘we’. The consciousness of the West has turned a corner. We are now ready to assimilate and develop a living spirituality, shaped by each one who sets out on a path of self-knowledge and uses this as a path of self-development. We engage all those things the West has learned – our ability to be solitary beings; a skilled will to assert our highest intentions; an understanding of the spiritual world brought by people who have been there; an understanding of our own psychology and an ability to self-reflect. There is no formula. It starts with who you are now. We need to plumb the depths of our fears and insecurities, recognize and address our false self, and also acknowledge our aspirations and the parts of us that long to shine. One by one we can begin to open all those doors. Through personal transformation we place ourselves on a continuum that includes spiritual realization.