by Judy Merrill

Created on: March 14, 2009

To consider a shift, we must consider from what to what has the shift occurred? With consciousness, have we considered how blind and lame it was before shifting into the higher gear of spirituality?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: We are not a human being having a spiritual experience. We are a spiritual being having a human experience.

Reading this over time and again, we can see how we are a shifting human consciousness going from materialism to spirituality. And this was written many centuries ago. So, how long does it take to shift the consciousness of a whole world?

There is evidence to the shift. In my lifetime, a major war ended leaving prosperity and jobs for all. It broke the chains of recession and depression.

But like a line from M.A.S.H. says: When they finish here they take it on the road. It has focused for many of us how we go from one place to another, lighting up hot spots in the guise of trying to aid the people.

This defined the 50s and the cold war between major world powers. Where one took hold, the other went in to support the opposite factions.

The 60s brought out an attitude of 'peace not war' that permeated all things. The smoking of marijuana brought on a lethargy that did not speak to follow through with peace initiatives proposed. It became all talk and no action.

Out of this lethargy produced some very material thinking of the 70s, 80s, 90s, that held sway in the minds of so many. Everything had a price. Whats in it for me? became a watch phrase of action. It also produced a whole 'me first' generation for the future decades to follow.

But the Berline wall that had separated a city came down. This also signalled a definite change in the cold war attitudes that had existed since the ending of the major war.

The New Age movement that came into being through some of this (the 60s saw the writings of many people seeking something different. Shirley MacLaine was considered a pioneer of new age thinking with her books and journey) has not fulfilled its promise and had deteriorated into some self-culture and self-help types of books. This is producing a self absorbed generation of thinkers.

The only opening for growth has been the seeing the 'whole as one' attitude. This arose through religions and philosophies more than materialism thinking. So the shift to higher spiritual consciousness took some hold. The expansion of which is in its infant stages. We can only wait to see how strongly the spiritual consciousness can take and project us into a renewal and rejuvenation of our earth and all that is on it.

And then the medical miracles of the 20th century: Penicillin was discovered as a miracle of antibiotics. Many antibiotics followed. A shot for polio saved many lives. We were wiping out the epidemics of the past.

All of these things have brought us to an understanding of our oneness with one another. That, surely, could be considered a higher consciousness. And the more we see ourselves as responsible for our other human beings the more we will raise our individual as well as collective consciousness.

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