The conversation with Elisabet Sahtouris on Awakin Call stirred me to plumb the depth of my heart; it helped unearth and align with that true North that is inside of me. The message brought up gravity of the situation us - humans and the species on the Mother Earth face. The scenarios of potentially impending predicament weighed on me.

Yet, it brought to me colors of optimism. It expanded my perspective on the past, the present and the future. It stoked my imagination. It crystallized my thoughts. Above all, it inspired and energized me.




The topic demands so much knowledge and scholarship in biology, geology, sociology, economics, political science and spirituality. However, Elisabet’s virtuous storytelling came to my rescue. It made it so much easier for me to relate to, and to grasp.

 

What is that reality? What are its consequences that we might not find as comforting?

What does it mean for us today?

What gave wings to my imagination?
 

This is my humble attempt to articulate what I captured from it.

I break it all down in four parts –

Part I: Story of our evolution over 4 billion years. I call it the story of tipping points, each bringing a crisis that we, that is – the species on the Mother Earth brought on us, and then somehow evolved to overcome it.
Part II: Why and how we are in middle of the crisis, and a tipping point yet again. What does it mean to us? How big is this?
Part III: What do we do now? Can we survive? What empowers us?
Part IV: What can we do today?


Part I: Story of Tipping Points

When you are an adolescent, when you are young… you are feisty, you are driven to carve out your individual identity by competing with others. However, as you grow old, you reach a tipping point to realize you don’t have that same energy anymore. It it’s more costly to bump into competition and it is less costly to figure how to live together. You gravitate towards peaceful interdependence.

It isn’t just about an individual. We, as species on this planet, have gone through maturation cycles.

Our story is 4 billion years old.

The first half of it, almost 2 billion years, the Mother Earth was inhabited by bacteria that would feed on sugars and acids. The crust of our planet, the composition of oceans, and the atmosphere … are all formed by these bacteria.

The bacteria went through a major crisis, when the planet was running out of the sugars they could feed on. One of the major tipping points of evolution occurred, the bacteria cells learned how to make food using only resources there were available at the time, air and sunlight; they learned how to make food using photosynthesis.

The evolved, reincarnated species went through its own youth of creative expansion, until the next crisis arrived. The photosynthesis generated a lot of oxygen, and the oxygen is so corrosive (The reason we talk about and take so many anti-oxidants today). It almost destroyed the species.

Came along another tipping point - evolution to nucleated cells… The cells would give up some of the capabilities, so different cells would specialize in different tasks, and that interdependence and collaboration gave us, the species on the earth, a new birth.


The nucleated cells went through their own youthful abundance of creativity which led to crisis again, and after a billion or so years after, the species evolved into multi-celled creatures.

The human civilization went through its own evolution. The tribal system where each tribe is independent survived and thieved for long time competing, fighting with each other. It reached to a tipping point eventually where they realized that collaborating among them is more efficient than fighting. The tribes “nucleated” … they learned how to live together in cities where different people specialize in certain tasks, they collaborate and all in the city grow together.

The cities evolved into countries.

The corporate world has connected all the countries making us all a part of a global village.

As the current form of species on the Earth, we are going though our own youth. We have created a high-tech world that is consuming a huge amount of resources. It is a giant beast eating away the world consuming, destroying everything. This isn’t sustainable. We, as species on the Earth, are facing yet another crisis after life of 4 billion years; this time the crisis is so big, we have put ourselves in danger of extinction.

It is time for us to mature one more time. The year of 2015 is a tipping point.




Part II: What got us in to this crisis? What is this crisis? How big is this?

The modern science and way of life is based on the Darwinian principle – that is, people act only out of self-interest; it is a struggle for survival in fierce competition. Humans compete with each other for resources. So, we are busy creating empires to compete with each other.


In both the words – economy and ecology – the part 'Eco' came from the Greek root ‘Oicko’ … ‘Oicko’ means house hold – be it a family household, social household like our city or country, or the cosmic household that is our Mother Earth. The Greek word ‘Nomos’ means rules of the household. And so, the economy is about rules that run our world. The Greek word ‘Logos’ means organization of the household. And so, the ecology is about all that we have in the universe.

We humans made our economy superior to nature’s ecology. We saw ecology as a set of resources – we coin the term environment which in a way implies something separate from us. We are pillaging and plundering the environment in our youthful high tech world of creative expansion.

We are digging things from the earth, put them to use. We dump 94% of it as waste that is of no use. How long can this continue? We have only so many resources on the Mother Earth.

The moisture content in the atmosphere is more by 40%. And the effects are visible. A lot of snow dropping in the New York, Boston, Washington DC …etc, cyclones hitting Australia…

The polar ice has started to melt, and it is positive feedback loop – as the atmosphere gets warmer, more ice melts. As ice melts, the earth becomes warmer since there is less surface to reflect the sun rays back. As the earth becomes warmer, even more ice melts… the earth becomes even warmer… the melting follows a hockey stick curve… it is very slow and gradual initially, however beyond certain point, it becomes really fast.

If one third of polar ice melts, the sea level rises by 100 feet, we saw that in the past geology. The 13 of the 20 largest cities in the world are at the sea level. There would be millions of refuges. Sewage challenge would be a humongous challenge, air ports will be down cutting out support systems.




Part III: What do we do now? Can we survive?


Our time now, the year of 2015, is a tipping point for Ecosophy - the Greek root sophos or sophia means wisdom. So, ecosophy is a wise household - a wiser world where economy and ecology would collaborate. A place where ecology isn’t subservient to economy; there is rather a healthy respect for the ecology.


A caterpillar eats up to as much as 300 times its weight. It becomes so heavy, it cannot move. It gets dormant after that. The imaginal cells come out forming groups, cooperating with each other. They start resonating at the same frequency, and they evolve in to something totally new – a butterfly. As caterpillar dissolves from within, butterfly comes to life. We, the human kind, are kind of a caterpillar right now. The oil companies are imploding just like a caterpillar dissolves from within. It’s time for us to act like imaginal cells of the human kind, start creating new world of mature interdependence in place of fierce competition that is trying to grow at the expense of each other and our ecology.



We love the myth of Phoenix – something new emerges from the ashes of the bird. However, reality is different. The good things have to start evolving while bad is still around. The old and new worlds have to start living side by side right now. It’s a gradual process.

It's time for everyone of us to be like imaginal cells of caterpillar. It is time for us to “nucleate” one more time…time to collaborate to solve problems. We have to do it once more. We again have to drop our creative hostilities and form the kind cooperative that the whole Earth is already. Humans have to create our cooperative within Nature.

It is high time for us to cross this tipping point into our global communal maturity of ecosophy.

Create the new language of ecosophy. Teach it to the corporate world.
We are part of this ecology, not separate from that. Learn to live in harmony with it, instead of thinking of it as an environmental resource for us to consume.




Part IV: What can we do today?

We are in for a devastating time. Start creating sustainable pockets where we are – pockets based on local, sustainable economies.


We create our reality. The humanity has created massively scary situation out of fear.  Choose to live the life in the most positive way, so you can be the positive force to balance the negativity.

We need to bring down the cosmic love - bring it not only to the heart, bring it down to the toes fully embodied. It is there all around, it's matter of connecting with it instead of fear. Don't look up to the Angels for compassion, bring compassion using our own physical bodies.




Be optimistic. We are reincarnation of many others that went before us. We came for a roller coaster ride. Think of it as an opportunity to learn. The earth is a learning place. It is no paradise planet we dream of, but we grow as species. Countless other species before us have done it, they survived. Optimism gives hope and energy to find answers. Think positively. Talk with positive people. Good things happen. We humans are the most far reaching experimenters compared to other species that have inhabited our planet before us. So, if anyone can survive and thrive, it is us.


Enjoy ecstasy of forming new communities. Give, help others. Give things away and hope that other people take it up. Do it where you are today. Live the future now – become a tractor, become a role model… be ethical, transparent, loving, kind. That will pave the way to sustainable pockets. The idea and work of unconditional kindness, giftivism, helping others for community building ...etc that ServiceSpace  is spreading is so foundational, so important in that respect.

Music, dancing, art … are the most innovative, extremely creative and imaginative things we humans have developed as species. Embrace them. Enjoy them.



There is universal intelligence that Darwinian principle doesn't explain. But it's there, it is inside of all of us. Experience it by tuning into your inner voice.

Act on the calls from inside. Listen to that voice. It might come across impulsive. You may not be able to justify it intellectually. Your own intuition, your gut feeling is a natural, native gift. We all are endowed with that compass from inside that shows answers. Align to that. That naturally tunes in to the collective intelligence of the nature.

We humans are smart. We have ability to pretend that we are superior to the nature. But, we are not. Use all the abilities we have to fit in to the ecology. There is an intelligence all around that is beyond the grasp of western science. We are coming to grip with it now. Accept that, and try to align that collective intelligence. It isn’t intellectual, it is experiential.

We have seen rituals and belief systems from indigenous people that have been around for thousands of years. They see and experience things we might think as magical or implausible or unrealistic.

Someone asked Socrates once, "how can you see in the future so clearly? How are you so sure about your course of action?"
Socrates replied, "It's not that I know ahead of time. It is just that when I am off, my intuition guides me to correct my direction."
 

About the Call: The audio recording and full transcription of the conversation with Elisabet Sahtouris is available on her Awakin Call  page.
 

My Notes:

What a symphony of a conversation between Elisabet, Aryae, Amit, Mark and Nipun. I still wonder how this all got shared in a call of 90 minutes. Then again, that's the power of storytelling, and power of universal intelligence that connects us all - so much gets conveyed by the heart and the unsaid after all..

Mark Dubois was one of our callers. During the Q & A session, he shared deeply touching nuggets. Here is one of them...
 

We are in middle of a collective emergence. My sense is that we humans are in the very process of slowly learning to connect the genius of half of our brain to our hearts and our guts and to the other half of our brain that knows we are connected to everything. And evolutionary maturity is learning that, rather than that genius is so disconnected, we're in the time of this privilege of learning how to put those in sync. With this evolutionary journey it is about becoming more beauty, grace, elegance, and dancing, and living in resonance and in a harmony with a greater Universe that we've had our tuning cut out to do for so long.
 

Towards the end of the call, Elisabet had a couple of comments that left an imprint on me.
 

However that you want to change the world, make sure that would makes your heart sing. It has to be something that you are passionate about. You waste time pointing fingers at others, trying to tear things down. Be a role model and build that butter fly.
 

What an inspiration to listen Elisabet - she can show the depth of the situation combining so many different disciplines, can explain it to all in such short time of the call, AND create positive energy while doing it all.

 

You were meant to have fun on this planet even if things are as bad as they are. It doesn't matter, you see. We are immortals. It's a challenge, and it's all here for us to learn from. The learning is love.

Whatever the question, the answer is love.  I love that song.
 

There is a very insightful Dailygood article from Elisabet that was originally published in the Kosmos Journal - Ecosophy: Nature's Guide to a Better World. I think it captures so much of what Elisabet shared on the call. The article has an incredibly powerful metaphor  ...
 

There is a lovely story attributed to Mark Twain, though never verified, of a youth who leaves home for his own adventures and returns, finding to his surprise that his father has gained considerable wisdom in his absence. We smile. It is the son who has changed. Whatever the actual source, the story conveys a kind of folk wisdom about youth and maturity - that a youth cannot perceive the wisdom gained by experience until he becomes experienced himself. We humans now stand on the brink of maturity, still in adolescent crisis, but just mature enough to seek ancient wisdom for guidance.
 

It's time to tune into the nature for guidance.

Tune In... It is a Tipping Point for Ecosophy ... :)

Where do I fit in with this all? How can I relate to this? My present form is a mortal, one person, one individual meant to spend a number of years that not even account for round off error in the life on our planet of more than 4 billion years ... My form is a little spec if anything, in the Mature Nature's big scheme of things. And yet, I am part of that universal intelligence, love that is connecting me to all. And that is my blessing, that is my empowerment to be the change I wish to see in the world.

It drew me to the word Namaste one more time... :)
 

Namaste - I honor the place within you where the entire world resides. I honor the place within you of hope, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where when you are in that place within you and I am in that place within me, there is only one of us.
 

I came out of the call thinking "why did this call end?" I sent an email expressing that. And Mark Dubois summed it up so well in his reply ... :)
 

May the conversation never end...