Thoughts On Our Human Potential
..
One of my deepest passions as an awakened individual is contemplating what it means to be human at this time in our history and what our potential as a species is. Here are some key points of what I see as we continue our progression toward the future.
.
Although we live in unprecedented times, I absolutely believe that we are living FAR below our human potential.
People say that we only use a small fraction of our brains (something on the order of 10% or so). If we could capture more of our brainpower, imagine what that could do for us. However, my interest is not in our hidden potential for intellect but for consciousness.
.
Our Potential Is A Reflection of Our Consciousness
There seems to be no real unified definition of what consciousness is and there are as many interpretations as there are people to offer them.
When I interpret the various theories and contemplate them through my own intuition, I see it as acting something like a universal operating system, granting us an understanding of who we are and of the nature of the universe (our environment in which we operate) and providing an interface between us and that environment.
Just like a computer, the operating system can remain as it is (and not be able to keep up with changing demands applied to it), can decline in performance (through corruption or the introduction of a virus), or can be upgraded. It is by this very concept that I believe humanity can push through to a new, higher potential.
.
The Ego Has Corrupted Our Operating System
If my spiritual awakening revealed one understanding to me it is that we as humans are limited in every respect by our egos. To be clear, the ego is not a trait of pride or arrogance but a psychological construction that all people have to some degree (very young children typically do not yet have a developed ego, isolated indigenous cultures probably have very weak egos, and people who have engaged in certain effective programs of meditation and mindfulness—or who have spiritually awakened—can transcend the unconscious, dominant aspect of the ego—but still have an ego).
The ego acts as a constriction upon our greater consciousness. It’s like a choke-point or filter that limits its functionality in many ways. Although ego has played an important role in humanity’s development (bringing us the mental capacity for analysis and logical inquiry necessary for all our incredible technological achievements), it has also brought a complementary degree of conflict and suffering by which we seem to be capping our overall advancement as a species.
The ego’s limiting tendency is based on its fundamental belief in and requirement for separation. The ego sees each individual as isolated from each other, from nature, and from a higher cosmic order. This is automatically limiting because rather than experiencing our universal, divine nature we are just you and me and that is all we have. Not too inspiring or empowering.
Our paradigm of separation also causes us to be reactionary beings, motivated by fear, and willing to capitalize on “others” for our own benefit. Every major problem we can think of in the world right now—war, genocide, crime, poverty, poor health, social injustice, and more—stem from such a fundamental belief in separation.
If this was not enough to limit our potential, the ego acts in a predominantly unconscious fashion for most of humanity. This is to say, we are conditioned to engage in the same old patterns of thought and behavior even when those tendencies are no longer sustainable. The ego is so vulnerable that it will cling incessantly to that which has worked for it in the past and can never let it go for to do so would admit that its version of reality was found to be flawed. And the ego will never invite any suspicion of its validity and worth.
Can there then be salvation from our fallen state, a restoration to wholeness? I do say yes and that this is where the opportunity for realizing a greater potential lies.
.
Our Greatest Potential Lies In Expanded Consciousness
In my understanding, I see consciousness as a general property of our universe, something that exists at all places and at all times. In this base capacity it seems to be pretty much regulatory, maintaining the status quo of our universe. For instance, if we imagine the earth prior to mankind, nature was harmonious and self-balancing. No one species upset the balance; it was all even-keel.
Humans alone seem to have a higher degree of consciousness, or access to consciousness, which brings a greater sense of awareness, experience, influence, and so forth than the animal or, obviously, plant kingdoms. We are on an altogether different plane of consciousness. This is why we are able to exert so much influence upon our physical reality and to advance so far as a species. Slugs and snails are relegated to crawling in the dirt.
Yet some humans seem capable of an even more expanded state of consciousness. While most people see themselves and their environment as disconnected (by way of ego), there are others who have been able to transcend the ego either by spiritual discipline or through abrupt spiritual awakenings.
For such people, their “operating system” has been markedly upgraded to understand and interact with one’s environment. Rather than division, things are seen as much more cosmically-unified, an experience of absolute oneness.
If humanity as a whole can reach this state of expanded consciousness we will drastically increase our understanding of Self, of the nature of the universe, and of our ability to interact with—even greatly influence—our universe, perhaps in remarkable, new ways.
We will have surpassed by far the base consciousness of the universe as well as the higher human status plagued by the harmful tendencies of the ego in order to reach new levels of consciousness by which we can find opportunity to rise toward our greater potential.
.
Evolution in Consciousness
Humanity, like all things, is in a state of constant evolution toward a higher and higher version of itself. Certainly, biological evolution is controversial and if it is a valid experience of the organic world at all it does not appear to be advancing very rapidly.
But for humans, we have continued toward a higher evolution in other ways. One has been that we are the first species to significantly develop technologies to expand our influence upon our environment. The human ego has allowed for this and so has been an “evolutionary” benefit as already discussed. But, as an unconscious mechanism restricting a more expanded consciousness, it is now becoming an unsustainable, existential threat.
This being said, I see our evolution now shifting in yet another way (notice how much more rapidly these transitions of evolution seem to be occurring: millions or billions of years of biological evolution, thousands of years of technological evolution reaching exponential growth in only the last couple of centuries, and now what may be a rapid transition into an expansion of consciousness for all of humanity).
As humans are accessing an expanded state of consciousness and finding an understanding of oneness with all things, we are able to rise above the tendency of the separation-based ego to cause conflict and division. But in the unified nature of our expanded consciousness, we are also finding a greater power for new levels of inner and outer well-being.
To be fair, there have been many individuals throughout history who have experienced this possibility of expanded consciousness. But more generally, the experience of humanity has not. It is my contention that we are now in the beginning stages of a new shift for a much larger percentage of humanity.
.
Source Consciousness
What I believe is pushing humanity through to new levels is a renewed connection to what many refer to as Source consciousness and energy. Source could be seen as the cause of all current creation and the re-Source for our own co-creation here in time and space.
While many people make Source synonymous with God, I don’t think that is quite accurate. It could be that Source is, in fact, God but that would require that we rethink our assumptions about God (mono-theistic, separate from all creation, the great Judge—these are all irreconcilable with pure spirituality because such concepts are based in the dualistic nature of ego).
By our transcendence of the ego, we are discovering bit-by-bit that we are one with ALL things; this emphasis is to imply that we in this realm of time and space are actually extensions of Source itself.
We as extensions of Source consciousness find revealed in our transcendence of the consciousness-constricting ego a new power by which we can thrive and advance. While we find our lives restricted by the limiting forces of this realm of time and space, our reconnection with our true nature, Source consciousness, supplies a great abundance by which we can fund a new level of progress as a species. We are freed and find supply to continue our evolutionary journey toward an ever-increasing potential.
I refer to this supply of well-being and all that is needed for our progress as spiritual abundance. Its influence is massive and unending as long as we allow it—which in the transcendence of ego, we can.
.
Potential
The concept of Potential likely deserves some clarification itself. For most people, potential implies something synonymous with possibility. We often say that when there is potential, something better can be achieved but that destination is wide open.
I prefer to see potential not as a range of possibility but as a singular direction that we can expect should nothing impede or short-circuit the means to that end.
Potential could be seen as the embedded, unmanifest reality intrinsic to a particular set of conditions. In physics, potential energy refers to what is capable of being done by an object if it is allowed to release that energy by way of an impending circumstance. A vase tottering on the edge of a shelf has a certain potential energy relative to being allowed to topple to the floor. If it does fall its potential will have been expressed through its decent and in the collision with the floor.
In electrical physics, there is a similar concept called potential difference. In a transfer of electrons, there is a movement based on a difference of potential known as Voltage. The electrons will move to a very specific destination as long as an uninterrupted circuit is provided.
As might be obvious by now, I view the ego as the switch in the circuit which prevents the necessary current from flowing. We are denied the Source of our energy and therefore find a disconnect from the potential which is displacing us toward a new position. Said another way, I believe that Source is pulling us toward a higher potential of which ego is short-circuiting.
.
Our Ultimate Human Potential
What does our ultimate potential look like exactly? It’s hard to say. By and large, our results as a species have only been by ego so as we transition into a completely different “operating system” we should expect to see totally different results. Our future may not resemble our current reality or even have no significant limitation at all.
In this way, I don’t really see a final destination for humanity, what the notable evolutionary philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin termed the Omega Point, but rather a continual draw to ever higher forms of being.
If I had to speculate, I would suggest that (assuming we can turn the tide on our currently unsustainable egoic state of consciousness) as we progress through the next several thousand years of our development that we will continue to be bound less and less to the restrictive nature of our realm of time and space and perhaps even surpass it. Such an outcome almost seems inevitable given enough time.
If we gauge the possibilities of consciousness with our predicted near-future advancements in technology it seems as though anything is possible. Ray Kurzweil, one of the most respected futurists of our day, predicts that in our lifetime we will see a billion-fold increase in individual human intelligence as we become neurologically-connected to the cloud. Many transhumanists and posthumanists suggest that we will soon have the capability, for those who desire to do so, to entirely upload our consciousness into the cloud and live forever as digital beings.
What will our expanded consciousness mean for our future? I think that we ourselves will become the extraterrestrials to some other galaxy’s version of our current selves. We may overcome the physical limitations of our bodies altogether and find the capability to merge between dimensions. It is entirely possible that we could become our own creators of other realms of time and space. All that is needed is time and the continued abundance of Source to fund ever higher transitions.
Source seems to me to be both the re-Source needed for our advancement but also the potential which draws us to ever-expanding versions of ourselves by our unified consciousness. In many ways, I suspect that Source is calling us back home; that our own potential IS Source. Toward this end, I would say that should we collectively make the shift in our consciousness, we will undergo incredible changes as a species.
.
Aaron Force is a blogger from Seattle, Washington. He writes to educate others about the nature of an expanded consciousness to evolve humanity. Aaron unexpectedly experienced his own profound awakening and ego transcendence in 2015 and soon understood that the qualities of his own experience (a greater expansion and evolution in his life) could be applied to mankind collectively.