Regarding the world's "villains" and destructive events - we find ourselves discussing. organizing, and analyzing the dynamics; we hurt, we cry out, we whine, and experience anguish and denial. But are we up to the most powerful, arduous, earth-shaking, orgasmic shift there is?... Taking on the responsibility of changing our consciousness.
Introduction
Since our mental models set the path for everything in our world - including ourselves - shifting our invisible paradigms constitutes the most powerful level of change we can create in individual consciousness and social institutions.
As Edgar Morin states:
"[A] paradigm is both underground and sovereign in all theories, doctrines, and ideologies. The paradigm is unconscious, but it irrigates and controls conscious thought."
In Waking Up, Charles Tart, an American psychologist and parapsychologist known for his work on the nature of consciousness, introduced the phrase "consensus trance" to our lexicon. Tart likened normal waking consciousness to hypnotic trance. He discussed how each of us is from birth inducted to the trance of the society around us.
Duane Elgin, in turn, asserts that our lives within a given worldview can be described as existing within a "perceptual paradigm," in which we experience life to the limited degree that the given paradigm allows. He posits that the invisible "dimensional geometry" that structures physical space also analogously structures psychological or perceptual space as an organizing framework.
Each new dimension or context is designed to call forth new potentials from us. As we perceive the possibilities inherent in each new dimension, we begin to actualize them - such that each provides new opportunities or learning contexts for individuals and societies to fill in with creative actions.
We began as hunter-gathers, then morphed into farmers, and eventually moved into the technological era.
However, eventually a fresh paradigm becomes stale and confining; we may feel like a chick whose survival depends on its ability to peck its way out of an egg.
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In the previous article we were presented with one of the deepest, usually unconscious, worldviews by which we are possessed - "power-over": man over nature, men over women, and men over other men.
In future pieces we will explore parallel paradigms that exist alongside our current mental and institutional frameworks.
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