Changing Thoughts to Change the World

(To go straight to practical ideas click here)

There are no “global problems.” The world does not need to be fixed. There is an abundance of natural resources on this an other planets that we have not begun to fully understand and learn how to relate to in valuable valuable ways. Why then is it uncertain that humanity will survive the next five hundred years?

Our variable is our patterns of thinking. All human behavior emerges as the result of our conscious and unconscious thoughts, galvanized into action by the emotions these thoughts give birth to. It is our thoughts and beliefs in what will and will not create well being, that determine much of the man-made world around us.

We produce thoughts as fast as we produce products in our world, most of which destroy more well being than they provide. To get to the heart of what is creating a world in which most people feel stressed and unable to create the world they want to live in, we need to look at some very basic patterns in thought that are reproduced constantly in the 60,000 thoughts we have each day.

One of the most pervasive patterns is single-focused thinking with a backdrop of the past. When we have a specific goal or problem, we look for the most direct way to achieve the objective and then put it into action, in most cases with little awareness of how it affects our other objectives and values. We live a life of compromise and inadequacy as we spend money to feel good, then make money to have reserves and feel bad, then go to the gym to get healthy, then eat more because we feel stressed and behind on our schedule from going to the gym.

The feminine within each man and woman brings diffuse awareness and synergistic vision. The masculine brings singular awareness and singular motivation. In every human being we can apply these qualities in any one of four ways:

• We can focus on one thing at a time and focus on getting it done. This creates lots of specific successes which often cause more pain than they resolve due to the way they affect the things we were not paying attention to.
  

• We can focus on one thing at a time and yet do many things. This is results in a  somewhat impotent and chaotic reality, without much excellence, due to lack of attention and follow through.
  

• When we focus on many things and do many things without awareness of sequence we create chaos.
  

• When we channel diffuse awareness into synergistic vision and then execute that vision with single-minded dedication we can create a powerful synergistic world.
  

In our western world powered by business, the first model has been dominant over the past thousand years and continues to replicate itself over and over. It plays out as the record of our lives and culture: We decide we need to stay fit. So we design huge workout gyms dedicated to nothing else but physical fitness. We decide we need to go there one hour a day to be fit but there is only so much time in the day, so we have to get there fast. We decide we therefore need to create an efficient transportation system so we invent a car. But we do not want to make a car, so we need money. So we pick the most efficient job to bring in cash so we can buy a car so we can get to the gym fast so we can stay fit. Only we don’t really like working at our job, however efficient it is at making cash. So we decide that eating treats and buying diversions is the most efficient way to distract ourselves. As we attack our body in subtle ways to divert our awareness from its discomfort, we feel more lonely and separate from ourselves. So we decide we need a partner and try and find the package that will best fit our needs, just like everything else. When there is an emptiness, we want to self-destruct. Then we need the gym all the more. The circle goes on and on until the western world as we know it is created: piece by piece. The recipe for this reality consists of: Single minded goal, followed by single minded action, leading to a compartmentalized world of total opposition. Because to our single-minded eyes, everything that happens to us is the enemy. When we are on the way to the gym, traffic is in our way. When we are on the way to work, our thoughts and feelings try and distract us. When people don’t let us get our job done so we can make more money to pay for our car, they are the enemy as well. Whatever our single-minded focus, there are always more people and things than not getting in our way. Life becomes a constant battle. And of course we need to “fix” the chronic fatigue that emerges by some wonder-drug or going to therapy. Only at some point it does not work. We feel inadequate, and that is the one thing we can’t simply “fix.”

One illustration of how fixed we are unconsciously into linear, one track thinking comes from asking this question:

Do you have integrity?

I want you to pause for a moment and notice several things:

•Is integrity a good thing?

•Do you have it?

•How do you feel as you think about it?

•Why do you have integrity?

•Why don’t you have it?

Make some notes to think about and answer these questions before you proceed. Then turn to the next page.

Next