Humanity’s Most Dangerous Unconscious Beliefs - Dick Rauscher
The more I learn about biology and the beginnings of life in our universe, the more I realize that the unconscious childhood primitive ego in each of us needs to awaken. We are on the brink of maturing into a more conscious and awakened human species, but we carry within, many very dangerous unconscious beliefs, and worldviews, that threaten our future as a species.
Where These Beliefs Came From
Our collective human worldview has been shaped over thousands of years. Some of our unconscious beliefs come from a time in our history when our understanding of reality and our world, was still primitive. Many of our unconscious beliefs came from early childhood. Unfortunately, many of those primitive unconscious beliefs are dangerous for our future as a species and need to be changed. In other words, we need to awaken to their presence in our unconscious mind. And you may be surprised to learn how those dangerous beliefs can impact your personal life, and the future of our human culture. Let’s take a look at one important example.
Dangerous Unconscious Beliefs
Let’s take a look at the belief that you and I are unique beings, separate from the rest of reality. If we use or believe in, the words or concepts called me, mine, us, ours, yours, them, or you, we are very likely trapped in this dangerous, unconscious belief. If our life is defined by the collective we, us, the “whole”, the human community, the equality and rights of all living species, we have evolved beyond this dangerous belief of separation from reality.
Considered by biologists to be one of humanities most dangerous unconscious beliefs, is the idea that we are independent and separate not only from the rest of the human “body” (ie. human culture) but also separate from the living planet (Gaia) that birthed us.
In childhood, we used our ability to remember our experiences and string them together to create our life story. The story of “me”. “My” story. We also learned very early in life that we were a unique self; a “me”. It was logical that we would come to the conclusion that “me” or “i” was a unique and separate person having those remembered experiences. After all, they happen to “me”. Right”? If it happened to someone else, that just proved that they too were a separate, unique self.
This early childhood learning slid into our unconscious and became one of our primary worldviews.
The problem with this view of ourselves is that it’s not accurate. Nothing in this universe stands alone or is separate. The more we are learning about reality, the more we are coming to understand that every living and non-living, thing in our universe is both connected with and inter-dependent on, all other parts of the universe. There are no exceptions.
A Metaphor To Understand Our Cooperative, Inter-Dependent Connection With Others
The easiest way to visualize this concept is to consider the human body. We are comprised of trillions of individual bacteria and cells. Each one of these is a separate, unique entity or holon. In other words, every cell or holon in our human body is a separate, unique living entity. Some of those cells or holons are part of a separate holon called our heart. Others are part of a separate holon called our liver. Other holons that make up our body are organs called our lungs. Our eyes. Our stomach. Even our brain. All of those separate organ holons make up our body “self” which is itself also considered a unique and larger holon.
Every holon that is part of our body “self”, from the holonic bacteria and cells to the individual holonic organs in our body, all have to work together cooperatively, and all of them have to mutually benefit from this arrangement. The cells cannot survive unless our body provides them with food and oxygen. The cells in our heart and brain also depend on their trillions of cells being healthy. If this system breaks down at any level, our organs and our body will become unhealthy and die. If our body dies, so too will the cells that make up our body die. (Note: that nature does not understand the concept of waste. Everything in nature is recycled and reused to create more life. Nature is always seeking diversity and balance. It never runs out of the resources needed to create new life forms.)
To briefly summarize what we have been describing above, our body is a living system (a holon) made up of other living systems (other holons), and all of those (holons) or living systems have to both cooperate with one another, and benefit mutually from the arrangement.
Now let’s expand our vision a bit.
If we are a living system, then we need food and oxygen to keep all our bacteria, cells and organs healthy. Right? Well, those supplies of food and oxygen come from other bacteria and cells that have been working for billions of years to create our oxygen-rich atmosphere. Others have evolved over those billions of years into the plants and animals that provide our food. For example, without trees to cycle our carbon dioxide and regenerate the oxygen that we will need to breathe tomorrow, we would eventually die.
Some cells evolved to live on sunlight. Without sunlight supplied by our sun, the cells that use sunlight to create food for the plants they are part of would die. And of course, if they died because of lack of light, the plant or tree they are providing food and energy for, would also die.
In The Beginning
If our universe (the first holon) had not evolved the helium and hydrogen created in the big bang into the elements that became our first mega-stars, those mega-stars would not have produced the supernova explosions that created the elements required to form secondary stars such as the star we call our Sun. And without stardust from all those supernova explosions, our planet would not exist. Nor would we. All that stardust became the rocks that make up the billions of galaxies in our universe, including our planet Earth. The rocks on our planet eventually evolved into the first living organisms called bacteria. Over time, all the living organisms turn back into rock and the creation of new life continues.
The Important Question
So are we really separate, unique, independent beings? Of course not. We are conscious, living human holons created by, and dependent on, the holon called our living planet. Human holons, whose life depends on all the diversity and cooperative, interdependent support of the countless other living systems that make up our living planet called Gaia? The important question is: if all living systems on our planet cooperate and mutually benefit in their relationship with other living life forms on our plant, then “what are we humans contributing to Gaia”? We certainly “take” whatever “we” need, but what are we contributing to the process of life on our planet? How does Gaia benefit? What are we giving back to Gaia? No life form can survive if its only purpose is to “take” and “use” the resources of Gaia. It would only be a matter of time before Gaia died from lack of resources. Nature, or Gaia, has learned over the last 4.5 billion years to protect herself by causing those life forms to become extinct.
If nature uses all the diversity of our planet to create new life forms, and nature is always working for balance and creating mutually beneficial, inter-dependent cooperation among all her living systems, we need to think carefully about what Gaia is getting out of her relationship with our species on this planet? No species in 4.5 billion years has failed to answer this question and survived.
Reality As I See It Today
As I listen to the news about the droughts, the forest fires burning millions of acres, the millions of people fleeing from the violence and poverty that defines their future, the millions of children that are growing up without proper food and nutrition, while our politicians are endlessly arguing about
whose rigid, inflexible, ideological beliefs are going to lead our nation and
why global climate change is not happening and
why a trickle-down unregulated economy is the only economic and political system that can save us, and
the kind of fences we should build to protect our American Empire from those dangerous immigrants that are destroying our country…….
……..its very hard to see how we are going to awaken to, and move beyond, the arrogant, self-focused, adolescent, know-it-all stage of human consciousness that seems to be dominating our world governments. The same governments that are in the process of using the limited resources of our planet for personal power, destroying the diversity of our world’s various human cultures, and polluting our planet’s air and water.
Where is the soul in all of this activity? Why would Gaia want to keep us around?
Who We Really Are
Humanity is not a static soul-less machine that is defined by power, greed, and personal profit; a machine that exists separate and apart from the rest of reality. We are a living, evolving, species birthed by our living planet and fully dependent on the healthy life support system of our small planet. We are a self-aware species experiment, created by our living planet, that has the amazing power to decide what its future as a species will look like; including the very future of the planet that birthed it. No other species on our planet has ever had that kind of power. We are the planet’s first pure observing consciousness. Life doesn’t happen to us. We have the power of a pure, co-creative observing consciousness. We have the power to co-create the future with Gaia.
In other words, from Gaia’s point of view, there is a very large gap between who we are, and how we are behaving.
Conclusion: Finding Hope For The Future
The adolescent state of human development can be a very unstable stage as anyone who has raised children through adolescence knows. We are on the brink of maturity as a species. The signs of that next stage of human consciousness are growing stronger every day. But we are at a moment in human history in which time is running out.
Humanity needs every one of us “on deck” and ready to do our part to help us awaken to the belief systems we carry from both childhood and the ancient primitive human cultures of our early ancestors. Those unconscious, primitive beliefs are impeding our evolution into a more mature, adult, awakened, human consciousness. A consciousness with the wisdom to “see” humanity as just one more species created by our planet.
Like our living body, human culture is just one more living holon inter-dependent with all of the other living, and non-living, diversity that surrounds us. We need to move beyond our adolescent arrogance and learn the skills of inter-dependent cooperation.
We need to evolve a human consciousness that understands that we are not the adolescent “supreme rulers of the universe”. Contrary to what our primitive egos might like to believe, the universe we see when we look up at the stars on a dark night was not created just for us.
If enough of us can wake up to this simple reality, we can indeed begin to create the healthy future we envision for our children and our human species.
