Freedom in the face of Fear

Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber discuss the challenge of staying connected with a higher spiritual perspective when humanity's very survival hangs in the balance.

Here are some excerpts (sorry, this one is in printed form so there's no link).

Cohen: Often, the human beings who are able to really make a difference in these times are those who are able to see these very real crises and global events in the biggest developmental context - to see it all as part of a larger process, which itself is indestructible. Never losing touch with that perspective is critical, because the problem is that when we lose touch with the bigger perspective, we lose touch with the best part of ourselves. That's the big challenge at times like these. One needs to have a deep samadhi, a powerful focus, a steadiness of purpose, an evolutionary worldview, and this all needs to be cultivated.

Wilber: That is the challenging task, especially when in a psychological, cultural and economic sense the world is going through a great depression. It's happening in all four quadrants, as we would say - the psychological, the cultural, the social, the biological. It's almost as if a subtle energy of consciousness is itself getting contracted, and that's what's getting transmitted to all of us. That's what happens during survivalist times. So being aware of that and keeping the big picture in mind is exactly what needs to be done. That's why these times are opportunities, in that sense, to be able to find this being awareness even in the midst of the survivalist self-contraction and to be able to affirm that unqualifiable, infinite, joyful, radiant, timeless presence in ourselves, even as we go about taking seriously the issues in the manifest world that need to be responded to. That's not to say we only want to be in touch with spiritual values and ignore the crisis. We're saying to be in touch with both - with samsara and with the troubles that are going on there and with nirvana, which is the ultimate great liberation.

One of the good ways to look at our present predicament is that the ecological crisis is basically the first worldwide crisis, the first one that affects every man, woman and child on the planet. That type of crisis hasn't happened before, and what it's starting to show us is that in terms of the evolution of social structures, we have reached the limit of what the nation-state can do. There are three things that nation-states no longer can control: they can't control global climate issues in the great commons of the entire planet; they can't alone control monetary issues; and they can't control war. So those issues are pushing evolutionarily against the limitations of our present form of social organization, and new forms of social organization that are global and planetary are going to start emerging.

Globalization, in both the positive and negative sense, is here, it's on us, and it really is showing that there needs to be a transition into the next form of human organization, one that will have to include some sort of world federation and have global issues at its heart. So we are just at the beginning of that, and it's a very frightening and exciting period in spiritual evolution.

When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego,
and when we escape
like squirrels in the cage of our personality
and get into the forest again, we shall shiver
with cold and fright.
But things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our
bodies taut with power.
We shall laugh, and
institutions will curl up
like burnt paper.
- D.H. Lawrence

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