by Jessie Ayani PhD
Living through times of immense change presents us with the most profound opportunities to make a difference but there are glaring disadvantages as well. Prominent amongst those disadvantages is the difficulty in seeing the forest for the trees – or even the trees from the leaves. What is the big picture? It feels like humanity is headed for the biggest train wreck ever and, try as they may, no one seems to be able to stop the train. Our patriarchal status quo model has become industrialization. It is leading us down the path of certain destruction. Unless you are at the top of the heap in the model’s hierarchy, you are probably worried about the future. You also feel powerless to change it because the model concentrates the power at the top of the heap.
It’s not a model for the many and it is most certainly not a model that safeguards the wellbeing of future generations. In other words, it is not sustainable. It breeds indifference in the many because power and wealth are concentrated in the few. The indifference further entrenches the status quo. Spiritually aware people can see, hear and feel the need for change but few of us know where to turn to support it. Let’s try to sort out the forest, the trees, and the leaves.
We are the leaves. In our world we can see that the hierarchical industrial model has penetrated every aspect of our lives. The model provides the infrastructure for medicine, government, religion, family, education, farming, business, scientific research, and the list goes on. It is well entrenched. It is the status quo. From the perspective of the leaves, we see that all of these systems are flawed. They are not working on behalf of the earth, all life upon the earth, and “we, the leaves” in particular. We also feel powerless to change them. Complacency has become the norm. That is the leaf perspective.
How do the trees perceive the world right now? We are living through the end of a 5000 year-old epoch. The patriarchy has spent itself, used most of the available resources, and forever changed the delicate balance Mother Earth once used to sustain herself. Will Mother Earth become like the industrialized modern mother who is unable to birth her children without the model’s intervention? Do those at the top of the heap think we can clone another Mother Earth? Though the wheels of change are turning a little faster than in past epochal shifts, the outcome remains anyone’s guess. The tree perspective provides a slightly bigger picture than that of the leaves but no real solutions.
What of the forest’s perspective? This self-destructing model of the patriarchy was preceded by a matriarchal epoch. That model is said to have been more egalitarian overall. However, it was also said to have worshipped the Matriarchal Goddess. That isn’t a lot different than the way we presently worship the Patriarchal God. Though that epoch may have started in an egalitarian social order, by the time it was headed for its inevitable self-destruction and absorption into the new model, power was obviously concentrated in the few. If it had been truly democratic, it would have survived. The forest perspective is big. Does it help us understand what is happening now or what happens next?
If we create a visual of the models, the evolution of the epochs may be revealed. We can use a downward pointing equilateral triangle to represent the matriarchy. It is egalitarian in nature but it focuses all of the power in the goddess (the womb/earth as mother/water) and it excludes men. On the spiritual path I share, this speaks to me of the emotional-mental field. It is the feminine part of the lower astral (thought field or 4th dimension) where we store emotional memory. It tends to be the level of the spiritual work most easily embraced by women. At the same time it is the level of the work where women seem to have the most self-healing work to do. Bringing back the matriarchy is not going to stop the train wreck.
Moving onward to the 5000-year epoch of the patriarchy, we can represent it as an upward pointing equilateral triangle. Most everyone is at the bottom and the king/dictator/CEO is at the top. There is a middle echelon as well, meant to directly serve the ONE, so we can see it as the many, the few, and the ONE. It fits our model of the patriarchal God (the mind/sun as father/air). Over the epoch this model has denied power to women. On the spiritual path, it represents the intellectual-mental field of the lower astral. This masculine part of the lower astral field began with the pursuit of mental greatness and is ending with the destruction of Mother Earth. If the matriarchal epoch helped us feel, this one has helped us think (mostly about ourselves).
Where to now? If we overlay one of our triangles on the other, we create a Star of David. The many, the few, and the ONE all share equally. In this new model (spiritual/integration/fire), the feminine and masculine powers lose a lot of their respective clout and have to learn to co-create in what looks very much like a democracy. On the spiritual path I share, we find this new model aligned with the upper astral, the spiritual-mental field of 4th dimension. We feel, think and imagine. That is regarded as a significant ascension step. I believe Mother Earth will take this step. Humanity, on the other hand, faces a choice. Do we take the step and enter the next epoch, or do we continue with the status quo and self-destruct along with the patriarchal model, which will lead to our extinction. A lot of very brainy people are presently pondering this question.
For the visionaries who are reading along with me, I would like to skip ahead to the most likely epoch beyond co-creation. Draw a circle around the Star of David. This circle is Mother Earth. Within the circle are the forest, the trees, the leaves and all of the life within the forest right down to the tiniest soil microbe and the molecules in the air. That future epoch will be all-inclusive Oneness (love/fusion/earth). That leap into the 5th dimension will be a great coming home for all those, including Mother Earth, trapped for all these eons by “The Fall”. It will teach us to love for the sake of love. That is the “above the forest” very big picture.
Humanity cannot skip epochs. Neither can Mother Earth. However, we can, through self-mastery, transcend an epoch (master it) and begin living the future epoch. In fact, some of us must live that future to sow the seeds for humanity’s inclusion in it. At that level of awareness, in the refined atmosphere well above the forest, the present time is beginning to look less like a train wreck and more like the Divine Plan unfolding, on a grand scale.
That puts the present in an interesting light. It looks like the greatest impediment to stopping the train before it self-destructs is the indifference of the leaves – us. The best remedy for that is for the all of us to wake up and take the power being offered to us by the coming epoch. That power is true democracy. What about democracy? It doesn’t really seem to be supporting the many. Wasn’t that the promise? Democracy looks like it might be on its own train wreck.
In America we were fortunate to have had a sublimely articulate dreamer write our Declaration of Independence. With 55 important words of abstract truth, Thomas Jefferson set the stage for the unfolding of this new epoch by pulsing the collective consciousness with the co-creative epoch’s power – true democracy.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
(Thomas Jefferson, American Declaration of Independence, 1776)
Two things should be noted about this gift of freedom. First, the word men, is, in the abstract interpretation, a reference to all human beings, not just the white men who had all of the power in Jefferson’s time. That abstract truth has stood the test of time through emancipation of slaves, women’s suffrage and the civil and human rights movements. Second, an abstract truth has no historical reference point but is, instead, a mirror of the times in which it is interpreted. That means it has a timeless quality and is evolutionary by nature. True democracy’s evolution, though continually battered and tested by the worst sort of opposition, is, as its nature implies, a matter of time.
Jefferson was over 200 years ahead of his time with a vision that has yet to be purely manifested. I have to believe that he understood about timing – the epochal nature of social structure. Great shifts need to be jump-started by seed-sowing abstract dreamers like Jefferson. Then they need to be nurtured by super-conscious people, like Mahatma Ghandi, who demonstrate how to live the pure truth of the vision. It may look like a train wreck from the perspective of the leaves but from the more refined atmosphere above the forest, where new epochs are born, it is a cyclical passage – the Divine Plan unfolding.
As visionaries, we must look to the epoch ahead to know how to live consciously in this one. Is global warming our train wreck or our “not to be ignored” wakeup call – the call to end indifference and come into balance. If we know in our hearts where we are going it might not be so traumatic to watch the old model self-destruct. In fact, it might be just the crisis we need to move beyond fear into peace, love and joy – the promise of true democracy.
The answer to the question “where do we turn?” is both within and without. We can help humanity make this big transition by making the transition to the upper astral in our own lives. There has never been a better time to attain self-mastery through conscious spiritual work. It should be our highest priority. We can also begin to knit together a powerful community of conscious people who express co-creation in the political voice of true democracy. The magic of the mirror will do the rest.
Jessie Ayani
©January 2008