What sets us apart and where are we going?
What qualities as humans we need to develop in order to catalyze Collective Evolutionary Shift?
Have you ever thought about how the humans differs from other species?
Well, Roger Briggs has in his book called Emerging World. He did it so clearly and comprehensively that it caused me to take the ball and run with it.
Here’s a chart to organize his and my ideas.
The words in bold are what Roger called nine characteristics that set us apart from other animals.
This got me thinking. If the envelope was pushed on each one of these characteristics, what would the resulting advanced ability or superpower be? This might give humans clues as to how we need to develop to be ready to make the impending Collective Evolutionary Shift.
This is what I aim to share with you in this article.
SELF MONITORING
Self monitoring is the ability to assess one’s process and behavior in relationship to a specific goal. If I want to learn guitar and after a month of messing around on my guitar, I haven’t improved much, self monitoring would cause me to increase the frequency of my playing, introduce specific exercises and maybe get a teacher.
The way I see it is, the process one’s goes through to bring a goal to fruition is a process of aligning oneself with the laws of the Universe. Taken as far as it can go, eventually our intention becomes the Universal intention and our will merges with divine will.
DIVIDED ATTENTION
Some people might called this Attention Deficient Disorder. Others might call it multi-tasking. In any case, we humans have the ability to split our focus and juggle these foci. Taken past the limits of comprehension this can become an ability to attend to all things simultaneously, or omniscience which is defined by The Oxford Dictionary as the state of knowing everything.
SELF RECOGNITION
This is the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror. We take it for granted but animals can’t do this. What if we advance this skill as far as it could go? Would we be able to recognize the essential nature of ourselves and others? Would we be able to recognize our souls?
WHOLE BODY IMITATION
Have you been to a dance class where you follow the teacher, learning new moves and sequencing them into patterns? At first you’re just absorbed in the teacher’s movements, trying to mold your body to what you see. As you settle in and look at yourself in the mirror you begin to self correct, comparing how you look to the instructor and other students. Think about the layers of skills involved: mirroring, isolation, grokking the emotional tone of the movement and integrating all of the body parts. Maybe eventually you can perform the choreography without having to watch any one else. It seems to me, taking these skills to an advanced level you would be able to transform yourself into somebody else, like some of the shapeshifting superheroes. Apparently this is actually a superpower that some shamans possess.
MIND READING
Roger Briggs describes Mind Reading as the capacity to realize that other people have minds of their own, including thoughts and perceptions. This capacity includes the ability to anticipate what others may be thinking, feeling and perceiving. If you have ever been really tuned into someone you might have notice how you know what the other person is thinking before they say it. This skill advances to what is commonly referred to as telepathy.
SYMBOLIC INVENTION
You might be asking “symbolic invention, what’s that?” We commonly know symbolic invention as language but what is language really? It is the ability to represent consciousness and share this with another person and receive this like sharing in return. In other words it’s communication. Communication can happen within the same level of consciousness (intra) but also between different levels of consciousness (inter). Taken to its extreme it can happen between a dense level of conscious and a rarified level of consciousness such as Man talking to God. This skill of symbolic invention can become a two way Jacob’s Ladder, from earth to heaven and back again.
PEDAGOGY
We humans have the ability to teach. What does this involve? Self monitoring and divided attention, enable us to create a framework, a method, a system of how to do something. Then coupled with mind reading and symbolic invention we can understand another person’s perspective and communicate this framework to them. This is teaching.
Some people believe that what primitives called Gods were actually advanced beings (extraterrestrials) coming from the future into the present to teach us new skills. Furthermore, these advanced beings can be thought as our future selves. So this ability to teach that transcends time can become a way we can take leaps in evolution.
COMPLEX SKILLS
Like I suggested with Pedagogy, skills can be layered, resulting in abilities that seem to add up to much more than the sum of the parts. Think about the isolated skills that went into sending man to the moon and back. We have the ability to stack systems of know how. These complex skills make us capable of the Mastery of the Universe.
SELF REMINDING
Roger explains self reminding as the ability to understand a sequence of activities that lead to a goal and to motivate ourselves to move through that sequence to achieve that goal. Extrapolating this ability to the very purpose of existence brings us to an advanced notion in Buddhist philosophy. This notion is, the Universe is simultaneously empty and full. Let me explain.
Emptiness is like the blue sky. Whatever arises within the sky is part of the sky. The emptiness or sky is the context and the clouds, the content, are what fills the sky. Regardless of what shows up in the sky, the sky is still the sky. The sky is simply being. The clouds are what the sky is doing. Emptiness is like the canvas that we’re going to paint upon. What we paint on the canvas makes the sky full. Awareness, is the context, what shows up in your awareness is the content. Your life is the context. What shows up in your life is the content. On this journey from birth to death, by reminding ourselves that what shows up in our lives is the content but that the context of our lives is as important as the content, is the wisdom of emptiness.
CONCLUSION
If you’re one of those people who are very interested in humanity’s next leap in evolution, then you probably interested in how that’s going to happen. Will it be something that comes out of the blue, something triggered by a global event, something worked at systematically by a critical mass of people or a combination of these possibilities and more? I believe that awareness and intention are powerful forerunners to any kind of change. For us to be aware of who we are and what skills we have thereby allowing our imaginations to create possibilities is a way to catalyze this great leap forward that has been prophesied and which so many of us believe in.
What traits do you feel are particular to human beings and how can by exemplifying and mastering them can we point ourselves in the direction of the Human Species Shift?
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