We all share a common psychological environment, which many of us, most of the time, take for granted. From early childhood, our experiences are established to conform to our specific cultural norm; any anomalies are usually corrected and the corrections then reinforced through various socializing processes, such as family, school, friends, and such.

Thus, our “world” is often given to us through the medium of particular cultural filters, and so each of us is literally hypnotized from infancy to perceive the world in the same way that people in our culture perceive it. This is a very powerful behavioral and perceptual socializing mechanism.

A New Mind Emerges: People Taking Their Power Back

For a new mind to emerge during the times ahead, it will be necessary for people to take power back into their own perceptual mechanisms, to empower themselves by withholding legitimacy regarding old and outdated modes of thinking. This change, then, requires us to decide carefully what we think, how we think, and which beliefs we choose to adopt. This also concerns our opinions, agreements, and support, which we have previously been all too ready to give away.

Our beliefs, perceptions, and state of mind are crucial for how we understand the world around us. Thus, giving away our right over the power to choose how we wish to perceive the world serves to empower others over us. This, in essence, is the crux of social control.

Beyond Terror: The Truth about the Real Threats to Our World

Many of us focus on the immediate and seemingly ignore the long term, despite the long term having the greater urgency in scale. Our social institutions and media continue to reinforce the immediate and short term, thus strengthening our social myopia.

A report recently published in the United Kingdom, titled “Beyond Terror: The Truth about the Real Threats to Our World,” focused on the disproportionate attention given to terrorism in the short term compared with the threats that, although they resulted in more fatalities, were classified as ongoing, long-term problems.

(Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World by Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers, and John Sloboda. 1846040701)

The report stated that in 2001 in the United States alone, the following numbers of people were killed from various causes:

Malnutrition: 3,500
HIV/AIDS: 14,000
Pneumonia: 62,000
Heart disease: 700,000+
Suicide: 30,000+
Traffic accidents: 42,000+
Firearms-related incidents: 30,000
Homicides: 20,000+.

International terrorism, however, had a figure of around 3,000. This shows our old mind at work, how it perceives and prioritizes events. It is a mind that goes very far back into our species evolution, a mind that was set up to be on the lookout for insecurities and fear-inducing situations: it was our survival apparatus.

Developing a New Mind-Set: Opening Up to Inspired Thoughts & Guidance

Everything that we have culturally achieved has been the result of human vision. We now need to upgrade our visionary capacity, to open up more fully to inspired thoughts and guidance.

It is important that we ourselves participate in an effort to shift our thinking patterns, to develop a new mind-set. If a person’s mind-set is rigidly fixed into the old patterns of thinking, then that person will feel threatened by drastic change. The person may even try to resist strongly, to fight to retain a familiar environment where it is business as usual.

From Competition & Conquest to Connection, Communication, & Consciousness

For the past three hundred years, mainstream Western society provided its citizens with a worldview and belief system that has encouraged ideas related to the survival of the fittest, with its sense of competition and conquest. Such ideals are contaminating our social and cultural environment and leading us on a path to destruction.

The next shift must involve a conscious decision to develop our understanding, worldview, and wisdom through an intensive “inner evolution.” The focus of this shift is to replace obsolete beliefs with ones concentrating on connection, communication, and consciousness.

Evolve Your Inner World: From Possessiveness to Sharing, From Separation to Wholeness

It is time to release, or abandon, obsolete and superstitious beliefs. Our newly emerging scientific paradigm, with its quantum theories of entanglement, reminds us that we participate within an integrally connected and living universe. This understanding of a living universe makes it more imperative that humanity lives in accordance with balanced needs rather than consumptive desires. It is about living simply so that others may simply live.

As Harman puts it, “Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from dictates of governments and the results of battles but through vast numbers of people changing their minds — sometimes only a little bit . . . Perhaps the only limits to the human mind are those we believe in.” (Global Mind Change: The Promise of the 21st Century by Willis W. Harman)

Such a macroshift in human thought requires that a critical number of people in society evolve their mind-set. By way of paraphrasing what Albert Einstein said, the problems created by the prevalent way of thinking cannot be solved by the same way of thinking.

This is a crucial insight.

The modes of colonization and consumption need to be replaced. This entails a behavioral shift from possessiveness to sharing, from separation to wholeness, and from outer authority to inner authority.

Adapting to Our Rapidly and Inevitably Changing World

The upgrade of our thinking patterns is a beginning step to an upgrade in human consciousness, which is necessary if we are to succeed in adapting to our rapidly and inevitably changing world.

Evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris writes, “While people have always created reality out of their beliefs, until now a handful of powerful people dictated the beliefs of each human culture. The glory of our own time is that the news is finally out that each and every one of us has the authority, even the mandate, to choose the beliefs by which we live and create our individual and communal lives. To create the human future well we need good Vistas — consciously created belief systems comprised of worldviews and the values for negotiating them courageously and lovingly.”

Our priority is to first change our perceptions and way of thinking. It is a challenge we face, to adapt our thinking so that we “think in sync” with our changing world.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
Inner Traditions, Inc. ©2011. www.innertraditions.com

Article Source:

New Consciousness For A New World: How to Thrive in Transitional Times and Participate in the Coming Spiritual Renaissance
by Kingsley L. Dennis.

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About the Author

Kingsley L. Dennis, PhD, is a sociologist, researcher, and writer. He co-authored 'After the Car' (Polity, 2009), which examines post-peak oil societies and mobility. He is also the author of 'The Struggle for Your Mind: Conscious Evolution & The Battle to Control How We Think' (2012). Kingsley is also the co-editor of 'The New Science & Spirituality Reader'(2012). He is now collaborating with the new paradigm Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University, is a co-initiator of the Worldshift Movement and a co-founder of WorldShift International. Kingsley L. Dennis is the author of numerous articles on complexity theory, social technologies, new media communications, and conscious evolution. Visit his blog at: http://betweenbothworlds.blogspot.com/ He can be contacted at his personal website: www.kingsleydennis.com.