Image by Gerd Altmann
Narrated by Will T. Wilkinson.
Watch video version on InnerSelf.com or on YouTube
Barbara Marx Hubbard was an inspiration and a friend. We met thirty years ago at a conference, then she hired me for a year and my wife and I lived in her communal home in Santa Barbara. For those who don’t know, Barbara was a futurist and her theme was “conscious evolution.” She once ran for Vice President and toured/spoke/wrote tirelessly on this theme.
I’ve always wanted to explore this theme – conscious evolution – and experience the deeper meaning of it. Since Barbara recently passed and I can’t consult with her, this is my take. I’ll start here, with my belief that all evolving humans want three things: happiness, fulfilment, and meaning.
Happiness is doing what we love and getting fairly rewarded for it. Fulfillment is being who we truly are by actualizing our full potential. Meaning is doing what we love, being who we truly are, and manifesting our destiny.
Conscious Evolution
I propose three distinct but overlapping stages.
1. Meditation: Let Go
Meditation grows our conscious relationship with “Spirit,” by whatever name, and becomes an intimately sacred communion. We turn within to experience nothing, or no-thing, closing our eyes, quieting our minds, and letting go of attachments.
Meditation is about surrender, abandonment of identity to the one, experiencing no thought and peace. Beginning meditators often struggle to quiet their minds. I sure did when I was initiated into Transcendental Meditation.
I remember a morning in Vancouver, BC, way back in 1971, where I was meditating in my bedroom, increasingly frustrated with all the city sounds – car horns, people shouting, machine noises – plus the constant stream of random thoughts in my head. I felt attacked from both outside and inside!
Suddenly, a shaft of light streamed through the window and landed on my forehead. Simultaneously, I felt an inner explosion of illumination and my energy flow shifted direction 180 degrees. Instead of trying to escape all the distractions to some kind of isolated bubble of meditative calm, I felt myself expanding, extending my energy outwards towards every noise and thought. They were no longer distractions, they had become “targets” for blessing.
The difference was immediate and transformative. I’d been catapulted out of my head and into my heart. I began resonating with waves of energy moving outwards and my body vibrated with bliss. Not surprisingly, I’ve kept meditating this way ever since and I increasingly find that I can sustain this state throughout the day, simply by focusing my energy outwards with the intention to uplift and bless.
2. Mindfulness: Be Present
Mindfulness is the second stage I’ve identified, a practice that turns our attention back to the material world. We concentrate our awareness on the here and now into an integrated meditation. We become able to automatically accept what is with appreciation, releasing our judgments and desires, to be fully present in the moment.
Mindfulness represents the second act of the classic hero’s journey. Meditation is the first, leaving the familiar and beginning to explore a new world in consciousness. Mindfulness brings us into the underworld to face the facts of our life – some of them very difficult. We learn how to deeply feel the good, the bad, and the ugly. As this happens, life can lose its rosy glow in the neon exposure of reality, but we deepen our ability to accept without judgment. We find mentors, we slay dragons, we navigate a spiritual death and rebirth, all to prepare us for the third act, classically known as The Return.
This is where many of us get stuck, in my view. It’s like we’re walking up the cellar stairs and we pause on one step, afraid of what we might find if we open the door, even though light is spilling through the cracks. What lies beyond that door is unknown. What will greet us when we return to our “normal” world?
3. Activation: Radiate Love
Activation is how I describe this third stage in the journey of conscious evolution. As the word implies, we get turned on. Suddenly it’s not enough to sit in meditation, it’s not enough to just be mindful throughout the day, we yearn for more. The flow of divine energy has intensified within us to the point where it must find an expanded creative release.
To accommodate this urge, in myself and others who feel similarly called, I recently revived two programs that were created decades ago. Noon Club members set their phones for noon and pause every day to transmit the prayer of their choice. Love Casting is about directing prayerful, healing energy towards people as they float in and out of our awareness.
Being activated means that we are engaging our Divine Self to bless others and transform the material world, through the transmission of power that is uniquely ours, in concert with our soul group. We give the gifts we have brought back from our journey through the underworld and we radiate Love without concern for results.
Progression Through the Three Stages
Sustaining the meditative state in a lifestyle of increasing mindfulness prepares us for activation into conscious experience of our Divine nature, an eternal reality beyond time and space, described as “coming home.”
Any individual who is activated can activate others through their presence.
Consciously activated individuals are now midwifing humanity through the labor pains of transformation, the well-known caterpillar-to-butterfly process. Many of us are familiar with this metaphor but it’s easy to overlook the necessary chrysalis stage in between.
The caterpillar doesn’t magically become a butterfly. It dissolves inside a cocoon before it can emerge into flight. Dissolving into goo is where many of us find ourselves these days and perhaps that also describes the trajectory our whole species is on. It’s unprecedented. It’s why we need each other more now than ever before.
My meta belief is that anyone who becomes fully activated during their lives continues radiating Love after death, broadcasting an awakening impulse throughout the cosmos that entrains progression through these three stages of conscious evolution, a process that is real and immediate (and increasingly urgent), despite how it might be described and experienced.
Copyright 2022. All Rights Reserved.
Book by this Author:
The Noon Club
The Noon Club: Creating The Future in One Minute Every Day
by Will T. Wilkinson
The Noon Club is a free member alliance that focuses intentional power every day at noon to create an impact in human consciousness. Members set their smart phones for noon and pause in silence or to offer a brief declaration, transmitting love into the quantum world of mass consciousness. Meditators lowered the crime rate in Washington DC in the 89's. What can we do in The Noon Club? Participation is simple. Just set your smart phone and pause at noon every day at noon to transmit. For updates on the program and more information, and to connect with other members, visit www.noonclub.org .
Click here to order this book.
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About the Author
Will T. Wilkinson is an author/presenter/mentor living in Maui with his wife of 28 years. He’s currently developing a global Love Casting network to provide a daily transmission of loving energy to heal and uplift all those open to receive and amplify the gift.
For more information and support along the way, visit www.NoonClub.org and contact Will T. Wilkinson at
