COSMOS/SPIRIT
No Fruit Trees
But just as greater awareness of our planetary presence lies outside the frame of reference of our present paradigm; our Cosmic presence is regarded as even less relevant within this prevailing mindset. Within the current reductionistic/mechanistic paradigm, there's no compelling reason for us to become more aware of our planetary... let alone our Cosmic presence. After all, doing so doesn't meet any of our physical survival needs. There are no fruit trees in outer space. There are no fresh water lakes or gas deposits among the stars (as far as we know). There isn’t even oxygen to breathe in order for us to survive there, so there doesn’t appear to be much of a reason for us to think about it.
But evolution always moves in the direction of greater consciousness. And greater awareness of our Cosmic presence, along with our energy-based participation in the Universe through the inner work, is the direction evolution is moving us toward. But if we choose not to continue our evolution and expand our spatial grounding this way, we might lose our relevance to the Universe. Our human 'seed' will then have truly fallen on rocky ground.
Cosmos As ‘The Heavens’
"A spiritual void was created when the religious imagination withdrew from the heavens..."
Rupert Sheldrake
Realizing our Cosmic presence and togetherness is essentially a consciousness/subtle energy based spiritual activity. It raises us up not just individually - but as a species - to greater unfoldment of our spiritual nature. It 'flexes our spiritual muscles' so to speak. It's no accident that even in our pop culture there's always been a certain ‘blurring’ between depictions of our Soul’s home, heaven; and the physical Cosmos. Even the term ‘the heavens’ reflects this instinctively felt connection between the larger physical universe we inhabit - and our Soul. The misunderstanding has involved how we think we ‘get there’. Many believe we go to heaven after we die, then float around without bodies like astronauts float around in deep space. We’ve not had a sense until now that ‘getting to’ heaven, 'the heavens', or 'the Cosmos', doesn't necessarily have to involve spaceships... or dying. Throwing a pebble in a pond results in wider and wider concentric ripples moving out over the surface of the water. Similarly, just like ripples in a pond move out concentrically from the very same point, our evolving spatial awareness must expand ever outward while we stay grounded exactly where we are, until we finally begin to feel our collective presence on our beloved Earth Mother, within the Divine Cosmos.
"We have an emotional bond to the Universe."
Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor
The Great Cosmic Mother
Containers of Infinite Divine Awareness
For ages mystics have used the ocean as a metaphor for our inherently unbounded Divine ‘Pure Consciousness’ because water - whether in an ocean, or a tiny bottle - conforms perfectly to the shape of any container it's poured into. Think of species-specific sensory systems as similar type containers. They provide information about the local world around us. In this way, our sensory system keeps our Divine Infinite Awareness and Pure Consciousness bound and circumscribed to a particular order of magnitude of spatial reality even as our Divine essence seeks ever greater expression through a more expanded spatial awareness.
How We’ve Traditionally Framed The Tension
Between Our Physical/Divine Natures
We feel an inner yearning from our Soul to expand in awareness up to the Cosmic dimension of our existence. This is the more exalted and sublime ‘pull’ of our Soul in opposition to the more limited sense and instinct-based perspective of our physical being. This 'tension’ that exists between our animal nature and our spiritual nature is the metaphysical dilemma that theologians have pondered for centuries. In most church teachings, this inner dualism was portrayed as the inherent 'evil' of our physical body leading us into 'sin' and away from the 'higher' spiritual aspirations of our Soul.
Planetization, on the other hand, sees this body/Soul dualism more as the 'inner pull' of our Soul to align us more and more consciously to the higher perspective of our 'Soul's eye view'. It frames these opposing forces in a broader perspective that takes the matter out of the realm of 'sin' and personal shortcoming. There's no blame, only an emphasis on the need for expansion of consciousness, particularly the need to expand our orientational referents within Space/Time.
"The Sources of the great forces at play in the world are beyond man's earthly vision. But when someone chooses to leave the 'world of men's affairs' and approach the sacred on the level of the earth, he sees that his role is to be an open channel for the accomplishment of the Divine plan."
Martin Lev
The Traveler's Key to Jerusalem