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!"#$%&'()%" What does it mean to live a mythic life? A myth is something that never was but is always happening. It’s It’s not a superstition. The myth contains the coded DNA of the human psyche. It gives us the rest of the story. story. It gives us the larger pattern. Sometimes by pursuing the great stories -- the life of Gandhi, Emily Dickinson, of Helen Keller, the life of the Ramayana, the life of Christ, the life of Buddha, the lives that are our own lives with large -- we find that the personal particulars of our own lives are then raised to the personal universals. And something within us is evoked to live a fuller, richer more compassionate life. Living this heroic journey means finding our own myths, for only by finding our larger story can we begin to live out of that larger story, and fulfill our supreme destiny. One of the most exciting things about finding our larger story and awakening to our purpose is writing the short and long versions of your your mythic journey. journey. Through this this exercise, you catch glimpses of yourself as the hero or heroine in your story. The question that now arises is, “How do I truly become the hero of my own story in all aspects of my life, and live a truly mythic life?” In this article, I will take you through the 11 Powers of the Universe and show you how you can become the conscious creator of your own mythic adventure through the understanding of these powers. This overview seeks to begin to introduce you to the complexity while the advanced training will help you to step into synergistic cooperation with these living forces. I am about to hand you the keys keys to the kingdom. Are you ready?
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1 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
Drawing upon the work of Brian Swimme and his wonderful and thoughtful understanding of the nature of the cosmos, let us now enter the Powers of the Universe for guidance, and also as the basis for emerging archetypes as seen in both their scientific as well as their psychological dimensions. Viewed in a new way, these powers traditionally thought of as s cientific understandings of cosmological principles can be seen afresh as archetypal helping powers. The 11 Powers of the Universe are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
Seamlessness Centration Allurement Emergence Homeostasis Cataclysm Synergy Transmutation Transformation Interrelatedness Radiance
The metaphors that are arising from our understanding of these powers utterly stretch our mind, our imagination, and with it, our capacities so we can truly integrate and embody our heroic story. If the student is ready, your humble teacher has magically appeared. Again I ask you my friend. Are you ready to truly understand your r ole in the universe? Lets now gain an understanding of the first power, and that is Seamlessness.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;. < =,>?@,11",11 One of the great powers is simply the fact of SEAMLESSNESS, sometimes called the Ground of Being, the Quantum Vacuum, the Space/Time Foam, and/or the Zero Point Energy Field. And we arise out of this seamlessness. Everything rises and falls away. So what is seamlessness? It rises up and refines itself through definition. And as you think, dream, define, engage; then the foam itself collapses until you’ve got a wave function that is able to result in something. It is there, where what we’ve been talking about, the invisible universe, comes the dark matter out of which everything arises. We are 99.9% pure generativity. 99.9% of you is the realm that gave birth to the universe. You are a mode of the Earth, and even 2 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
before that you are a mode of the cosmos. This seamlessness is probably what Bohm referred to as the implicate order that harbors everything. It is that 99.9% that we call the vacuum. The art and science of creativity and manifestation has to do with your ability to bring pattern and form into the wave of seamlessness. This is how you co-create with the universe.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;A < B,"#$>)%" Everything in the universe moves toward becoming centralized, in itself. The universe billows out of the Big Bang. And then this billowing fractures and it forms something more central, which were galaxies. The galaxies themselves break apart in this energy and form stars. The stars spin off from themselves after they’re centralized and they form planets. And the system moves toward a certain end, which is in point of fact from our perspective ourselves. There is a direction, a flow, in all of this. Center – fraction – out, Center – fraction – out. And it’s true of our lives. We get to a centered central place in our lives. And then what happens? It fractures. And so you look for balance again, and you find it for a while, and it fractures. And then new creations come out of it. In the history of the universe on this planet, the early Earth was a very watery realm with all kinds of interactions going on, but they resulted finally, all these interactions, especially when it was hit by lightning, in a cell. The cell membrane could withstand the chaos of the wild sea. It could preserve the growth of the complexity of this new reality with its new adventures. Something pushed out and asked for interrelatedness. And what came out of that Centration of the cell were multi-celled beings, which then allowed for evolution and for animals and for another kind of consciousness. Now how is Centration focused upon individual humans? We have gotten beyond the point of carrying our local life forward as with animals. We have gotten to the point of being so self-conscious in this universe, being the universe conscious in itself, that we are entering into participation with this universe. And the universe has gotten to the point that we have become a nucleus in the cell of the universe, able to participate in its re-formation, of which this strange story of the Hadron Collider is a very major piece, because it’s mimicking the conditions of the Big Bang and creation itself. This is where we are and it is phenomenal!
3 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
What has happened is that the modern industrial consciousness, which tried to shape our environment, shaped our humanity, blocked our participation in Centration. It was a side arm. The universe organizes itself so that we can find meaning in our depths, in our individuation, in becoming new centers of individual Centration. We have moved into Centration, into high individuation, with personalities that are as varied and as different as the multiform of species that are in our reality. Now, we are beginning to participate in the membrane aspect of consciousness. What does the membrane do? It is permeable and it is a barrier. It makes judgments about what it will let in, what it will let out. As the cell we are being asked by the membrane to become as intelligent as that membrane, and by and through our consciousness to choose which are the realities we’re going to let in, which are the realities we’re going to release and let out. The way that we return to Centration and become part of the universal participation in our speciation, in our growth, in our becoming, is to go beneath language and to contact the universe directly. We can do it by communicating with birds, or with our animals, or with the trees. Nature gives us back our Centration in the depth of ourselves, and the depth of ourselves is the whole blooming universe.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;C D 6@@'$,?,"# What we mean by allurement is that which is the bonding, that which keeps the galaxies together. That’s the electromagnetic attraction to each other! That’s your attraction, the wild attractions. That’s the grand attractors that are evoking you. Those are the things that you are drawn to. What wakes you up, and calls to you in the back of your mind, and attracts you to itself. You yourself are a principle of allurement whether you like it or not. You are a walking magnet, whether you like it or not. So what we want to do, if we are playing the universe through our own beings, is to be capable of falling into union – and into love – with everything… fluttering our eyes as we do so!
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4 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
Emergence is when the universe assembles itself. Now if we remember the creation of the universe, it flares forth, doesn’t it? It emerges in a fraction of a second. And then it flares forth further as atoms. And then it emerges as stars and as galaxies and then as planets. And then the myriad forms of life show up. The point is that we are now in a point in time in which the Earth is facing a moment of emergence. It’s another geological era. We have come to the end of the Cenozoic Era, which was the proliferation of many species and the beginning of the cutback of these species. We are now, according to Thomas Berry, entering the Ecozoic Era, the era in which we become very mindful of life and co-creative in the life process. Thus, we are part of a geological era. We have become a geological force. The human is a new moment in geology, because we are a geological formation, albeit a very chaotic one. Our task is to reinvent this major form of human presence through agriculture, ecology, education, governance, spirituality. All of these major instruments and institutions are part of this transformation. And this will occupy the best creative minds for the next two centuries. We are in a place of a deep activation of creativity; the imagination is central. But the universe transcends even our imagination when it operates in us, because when the universe operates in itself, we are no longer simply imaginative. We are imaginal! In having access to the imaginal we can receive the blueprints, the guidance, forms and patterns. And these are very powerful things. How do you get from imagination to imaginal? You build internal structures. You build up inner sensory systems. Then you can drop in an idea, one that concerns you from culture, spirituality, governance, education, healing. You can drop it in after you have activated that imaginal mind, that mind will take it up. Then you will find that as you continue to think along those lines, you’ll have sensory, psychological, symbolic, and spiritual imagery. Accruing around the idea or concern. And then at a certain point, the process moves to another level and you will actually have imaginal imagery, so that you will no longer be the one who is promoting the thought. The thought will take you over. And once it takes over, you’re in an imaginal realm. That’s why in those 4 Realms of Being that we talk about, which are also the 4 Keys of Integration –Sensory-Physical, Psychological, Mythological, and Spiritual – they are actually ways of getting into the strata of the mind. And as you develop your relationship and familiarity with these strata, they take you inevitably into the
5 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
imaginal, which is the mind of the Quantum Source Reality, and the great Place of Generativity.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;H D I%?,%1#>141 Anything you achieve has got to be continued; a kind of sustainability. That’s what homeostasis is. What is the value that is being maintained? What is protecting the value, and maintaining the achievements that the universe has uncovered? It is homeostasis. But it’s also homeostasis, that when kept too long, will inevitably lead to CATACLYSM to break it apart.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;J D B>#>(@81? Every 100 million years there’s a vast extinction of species. We’re right in the middle of one. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the cataclysm has come upon us at a time in which we are being asked to speciate, and move to a new form or a new kind of consciousness where we can orchestrate the breakdown to a breakthrough. It also means that in times of cataclysm, you don’t go struggling back to the way your life was. You actually invent, create, look for Source, and put in a new garden in your psyche. And that’s the secret, and this is what innovates and extends the world. You don’t go back to your old ways. Why? Simply, because you are part of this incredible evolutionary movement that requires of you, radical reinvention, in order to speciate and go beyond your ordinary destiny. And by stepping into your supreme destiny, you will help move the world in the most massive shift in human history into virtually a new species that can be a deep and good steward of the Earth in her time of cataclysm. That’s why so many of you have had so many cataclysms in your life. It’s training. Those are your training wheels. Homeostasis—continuing for too long, statically in the same patterns – until the changing reality can no longer sustain it, till it breaks down into cataclysm. The cataclysm we face today is a phenomenal time in history. Never before in history has so much of the population of the world been attempting to make themselves relevant to the time, and to redress old wrongs, and to recover ancient wisdoms that can be put to modern and future process, and to cross the great divide of otherness and
6 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
enter into radical empathy, and to regard the huge problems of our time as opportunities in work clothes.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;K D =8",$G8 All civilizations have collapsed or imploded on themselves. The time it takes to rise is the same as it took to collapse. To understand complexity in self and the universe is to understand synergy. It is what happens in relation in the universe. You have positive synergy – mutually enhancing relationships. The Emperor Penguins survive intense winters by the outside edge of penguins who after standing too much of the freezing cold winds take turns going inside to warm up. It takes a large size of a group to survive the winter. Synergy allows them to survive. Synergy in the universe is a relationship that enables endurance. And now, life is making a new demand for synergy to us. The challenge of our time is for synergy to operate through consciousness of planetary role, to give birth to a new form that will actually become planetary. We are going from one form of humanity to another that involves a growth in form and complexity. We are moving from an industrial civilization to a planetary civilization. In the emerging society we are and trained and based on the notion that we are fundamentally an earth community. We need a way to lead to social cohesion by taking on the struggle of ecosystems in collapse, one that is far greater than enmity between human groups. This can be a response if we understand the synergistic relationship with other cultures and groups. All the different forms remain but with the planetary form of consciousness emerging, the older nationalistic forms begin to diminish. Synergy requires that this movement take place. We are participating in the birth of a society in which the fundamental is mutually enhancing relationships —aligning our energies with this cosmological power.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;L D *$>"1?'#>)%" Transmutation is how form changes through time. Everything is changing. Natural selection is an early version of transmutation. See the nature of the universe in terms of huge moments. 7 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
First is the birth of the universe, with elementary particles-plasma without structure and radiant energy that changes into atoms. Then, mass clouds of atoms become galaxies. Within the galaxies, another archetypal moment of transmutation is when primal stars fall into stellar system with planets. Earth, from molten rock, becomes a living planet. Then from the early forms of life into advanced ecosystems of which the human is a part. These are the major moments, and throughout, change is happening – every moment is a moment of transmutation. These powers are ones that pervade the universe. Transmutation is soaked into every cell and shows up in heightened capacity in certain psyche. A mind that is sensitive to the dynamics of the whole, with insistence upon good outcomes, but not in a dogmatic way, but rather in its ability to change and find the way through. The negative form of the psyche permeated with transmutation is depression, cynicism, a sense of guilt and being highly critical of most everything. Transmutation in form of a human is a disciplined person who has a keen understanding of structure. What does it feel like to be the power of transmutation as a human? When the power of transmutation is most alive, one feels that one does not fit in. Does that sound familiar? This woundedness is directly related to the sensitivity. For those who feel the most cut off are often the ones that have the greatest capacity for providing what is necessary. They feel the universe has made a judgment on the Cenozoic era. They are part of the new emerging story, the new mythos. Their personal sense relate d to the deeper contour of the world’s transmutation. Constraints on human activity have to allow the world to flower. We align human energies of transmutation with the energies of the planet.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;M D *$>"12%$?>)%" It was as if the universe was going for life from the very beginning. Life is central to the universe. Life may have a larger role to play than we think, getting us into codesign. The universe had to transform itself over and over again to get to life. Transmutation is change at individual level. Transformation is a bout the work into the whole context by the individual. Consider space-time binding the way the universe folds back into self – into the present. Early structures are still being present. We are composed of early structure of the universe in hydrogen atoms. Galaxies come along and hold the potential for all kinds of transformation. With the emergence of life, the galaxies enable planets to come into existence and planets hold
8 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
the capacity for life. With life there is a way of holding the memory of an event that is used to structure matter. Cells remember how to use the power of the sun in photosynthesis. In sexuality two beings fuse but bring together the ancestral memories of their cells, carrying through the shuffling and new combinations of genes, so that a new kind of being can happen. There is the harvesting of all past into present—space-time binding. An individual’s experience can become the source for the recoding of the planet. You have thought of yourself as re-coders, in fact, you really are re-coders. You contain in your life all the main evolutionary events that are remembered in the DNA. Now, the power of one person is being folded into the cultural DNA because of the power of language. We see the universe becoming more intense in its folding back on itself. With the recoding of the human, we have before us the chance of bringing into the universe information, ideas and learning that otherwise would not be present. We as humans are bringing into the universe lineages that were previously blocked out. What enters into this life of the planet is the unborn future—folded into this moment here. This view of planetary future is way of showing what the universe is attempting to get to.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;.N D !"#,$$,@>#,&",11 Care is at work here, care in the universe. The universe developed at 13.7 billion years and there was care at work. Parental care emerged in the universe and is valued by the universe. Think of it operating for 100 million years. Wow. How we position ourselves in our relationships is crucial. Each is an act of the imagination. The dominant paradigm in our world is filtering us into everything. . Let’s look at the universe and find how it operates, and show how we can learn with regard to our relationships. Caring in evolution begins with the reptiles that hang around their babies and do not consume them. Care is a multi level word. In the baboon world tenderness is one of the qualities that the lady baboon looks for in the male baboon. The movement into the planetary human is a delicate process because it involves the imagination. Care has to be evoked. We are in that moment in which we need to activate these cosmological powers to enter into richer relationship with the universe. This is the extension of human subjectivity. This is the power of experiencing from another perspective, and to occupy another form of consciousness. The universe is expanding at just the rate to lead to life because the universe cares about life. The cosmological power of care is using the symbol of the great mother in 9 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
order to reflect on its own nature. The role of the human is to provide a vessel for a comprehensive care to come forth into the universe.
/%0,$1 %2 #+, 3"45,$1,: ;.. D O>&4>"(, The sun is the great radiance in our lives. There are two levels to this radiance. The sun creates helium in its core. It compresses hydrogen into helium with the release of light. Particles of light are photons. Radiance releases and creates the light, emanating as waves and then collapsing as photons. The sun is giving off these gravitonsmessenger particles that penetrate all into the earth, generating enormous response of pulling us to the sun. Then there is the radiance of the moon. Photons come out from the interaction with the sun on the moon. In the interaction, the moon creates new photons – moonlight. Moon is bathing us with gravitons–gravitation. Earth responds to the flood of gravitons with tides. The human perception is much the same two parts; the surface and the deep; the immediately presented and the causal. We have identified our perception with the surface, but have lost some of the depth perception. Thus while we may have empirical facts, there is little depth and appreciation of the perception of artists and sensitivities of every kind. And too many of our decisions are made on broken perception. To become the human form of radiance, we develop a subtle spirit to respond to the subtle spirit in another. We have to develop the container that can hold this kind of beauty. This may be our ultimate role. The power of radiance requires contemplation. Resonance is the primary form of prayer—reverberating to the point that you become the radiance that is flooding the world. With a desire to display, everything is to be admired. Movement into radiance is to recognize and feel it surging out of us. All the powers named of the universe are one, and seamlessly involved with each other. All these powers are attempting to bring forth radiance. Lack of confidence or doubt may cover radiance, because centration is not working deeply within us. Half-baked allurement keeps us involved with stuff. The one dimensional world view of materialism – homeostasis—in which a dominant paradigm holds us in a sub-human state of being – locks us up in tiny worlds that come from failure of tapping into the power of transmutation which calls us to transmute and deepen. But, by creating a culture in which these great Powers of the Universe which keep the universe going can be understood as existing in ourselves, we make ourselves radiant 10 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
and resonant with the emerging self, and the future which awaits us. Our most splendid radiance comes from our most supreme destiny. Your supreme destiny awaits you.
11 Copyright Jean Houston/Evolving Wisdom 2011. All rights reserved.
