Is there a New Consciousness Emerging?

Henry Reed

 

    Earth changes are happening and so seems to be consciousness. The idea of an apocalypse is paired with the idea of a Messiah. The Cayce readings refer to the Christ Consciousness. Unlike the image given in traditional Christianity, the return of Christ is, according to Cayce, to be something that people experience inwardly rather than it being a worldwide media event regarding celebrity news. Cayce gave a description of Christ Consciousness that didn’t’ refer to any one being, but rather was more like a state of mind. The version I favor is, “Remember, it has been given, the purpose of the heart is to know yourself to be yourself and one with God.” The formula has to do with experiencing an integration of individualized and universal awareness. It is this consciousness that I am seeing popping up all over the place. Here are two books, for example, that are very different from one another in content, style, vocabulary and intention, yet both are describing the same quality of consciousness that appears to be on the rise among us.

    The first book is 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Putnam) by Daniel Pinchbeck. A journalist’s account of personal explorations and musings regarding various events (for example, crop circles), philosophies (e.g., monistic idealism), and new experiences (e.g., shamanistic rituals with psychedelic plants) it points to the emergence of a new mentality. The second is The Mandala of Being: Discovering the Power of Awareness (New World Library) by Richard Moss. It is a physician’s teachings on how to avoid being caught in the illusion of manifestations and how to find one’s way to being centered in awareness, awareness that is both personal and universal. The second book is more individually oriented, aimed at helping the reader find the way out of the isolated dead-end of separation to rejoin the stream of life. The first is more impersonal, collectively oriented, pointing to a higher order, almost transcendent process, that is affecting individuals subliminally, as if leading humanity toward a mental breakthrough and possibly resulting new world order. What the two books have in common are similar descriptions of the new consciousness, as well as the trials and tribulations involved in becoming comfortable in it.

The number 2012 in Pinchbeck’s book refers to the Mayan calendar which comes to an end on the Winter Solstice of that year. This calendar, based upon celestial cycle, corresponding to tens of thousands of years, marks the lifespan of a “world.” In a few years, in other words, the world as we know it is coming to an end, according to this tradition. What Pinchbeck does is search for clues as to what is coming. Rather than look at the earth’s terrain, or the sociology of the future, his search focuses on changes in consciousness. Piecing together his various trails of evidence and speculation, it is almost as if he is predicting that during the “end times,” or the period of transition from the old world to the new, certain people will be “taken up” into the consciousness of a virtual reality, as if inhabiting the realm of the imagination. Others, not quite able to make the leap into the reality of consciousness itself, will be heaved asunder by the changes in the world they are used to inhabiting.

    Dr. Moss, on the other hand, is focused strictly upon the present moment. He wants to help us understand how we create our own suffering and how we can achieve piece of mind by the realization of our true nature. He presents a Buddhist-like approach to living in the present moment of awareness and releasing our attachments to the contents of awareness. He uses the imagery of the mandala to describe variations of awareness relative to the ideal. The mandala is a universal visual design in a circular format. It has a center point, and in many cases, a four-fold symmetry that forms a square or cross within it (for examples and links to mandala theory, see www.dailymandala.blogspot.com). It expresses the relationship between potential wholeness, on the one hand, and the “four directions” of actual manifestation on the other. The center of Moss’ awareness mandala is our true reality in the now. He describes this awareness as both universal and individually personal. He equates the four directions to four ways we can get lost in the illusion of manifestation (living in our stories of the past, the future, of “me,” and of “you”). He wants us to learn to come back to the center of the cross within the mandala of awareness. Mayan, Buddhist and Christian symbology share the notion that it is the heart that is at the center of this cross, the same heart that Cayce asserts is the channel for experiencing that idealized awareness. However understood or symbolized, it seems that the emergence of this new consciousness, however named, is leading us to find the path with heart.