Lower consciousness makes us tribal thinkers.
Our ancestors had an excuse:
They didn’t know any better.
They couldn’t see a world beyond their village.
They didn’t know anybody other than those in the next tribe who threatened their existence.
They didn’t have newspapers, radio, or television.
They didn’t know that the Earth was round.
They didn’t have internet that connected the entire world.
For them, the world was their village. But today we live in a global village, but there is very little evidence we act on that awareness.
Theologian Diarmuid O’Murchu reminds us:
“We need to begin by highlighting our universal and planetary identity as human beings — our primary home is planet earth, not the actual house we inhabit in a particular town or village in a geographical area of a specific country. Our national, ethnic, and religious identities then become relative values in terms of the greater whole to which we owe our primary allegiance.”
Think of a space shuttle blasting off from Cape Canaveral. Before lift-off, the astronauts see the fields around them. As the spacecraft lifts off, they begin to see Florida, a little higher they see the entire United States, and even higher still, they see the continents. Once in orbit, they see the whole Earth as one blue dot.
So, the higher we rise, the more we see.
When we are in higher consciousness, we see the bigger picture.
When our consciousness is low, we see only what is just around.
We are only concerned with our own self-interests.
Lower consciousness makes us tribal thinkers.
Think about the recent interest in civil space travel. Sir Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins, want to make space travel feasible and affordable for civilians. On July 11th, 2021, Branson and four of his friends went into space. They just went up a mere fifty miles above the Earth and stayed at the edge of space for just four minutes. Yet when they returned to Earth from that momentary space experience, they were ecstatic and figuratively walking on clouds, on the firm grounds of New Mexico.
During a press conference following that brief flight, some of the words used by them to describe their view of Earth from above, were magical, phenomenal, ecstatic, stunning, breathtaking, stillness, unity, quiet, zen, and being in the zone.
Each of those words describe a spiritual feeling that transcends feelings of division, suspicion, hate, spite, revenge, prejudice, judgmentalism, envy, and selfishness.
When they saw the Earth from above, national boundaries and tribal divides disappeared, and ecstatic feelings of unity and love pervaded their souls.
When he returned from the ten-minute space flight on the New Shepard rocket owned by Jeff Bezos, William Shatner who played Star Trek’s Captain Kirk spoke about the “thin air which is keeping us alive as thinner than our skin.” He also warned that humans can’t continue to “bury our heads in the sand” about climate change and that “we’re at a tipping point.”
(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)
