Historians are fond of naming periods of time according to the most important inventions and tools of that era. So, we have the Age of Reason, the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Age and we’re now in the Information Age.
When historian John Galbraith was asked how our era would be known in the future, he said that it would be known as the time “when the Buddha came to the West.â€
If he is correct, then perhaps the ever-expanding interest in Buddhism and Buddhist thinking, highlighted by the current popularity of the Dalai Lama, is a sign of this.
This movement is, I believe, a part of a much larger movement that is flooding our Western culture with notions of empathy, forgiveness, compassion, egalitarianism, and love. They are burgeoning forth, spawning books, workshops, movies, TV shows, and websites.
Information on the healing power of these forms of Love has never been so available: personal, relational, and communal lives can be transformed. Even laboratory evidence shows we are happier, more productive, and can more easily ward off infectious disease.
We Are the Leaders We’ve Been Waiting For
In spite of this, however, we are engaged in an epic struggle – personally and collectively. Our planet is poised on the edge of an abyss. False leaders everywhere unwittingly conspire with a machine-dominated, information-processing environment to lead us headlong over the cliff, into a vast abyss of disintegration.
Environmental pollution, global warming, economic globalization, war, terrorism – Violence of all kinds create widespread despair, helplessness, and hopelessness.
Our Grand Narrative seems to have reached a critical chapter. Soon we all will be able to see whether those forces of domination, greed, and insensitivity will push us over the edge into a global collapse – or if a critical mass of us will adopt the New Paradigm. If we do, we may be in time to strike a balance between creativity and destruction, between separation and unification.
The denouement of our story is not yet clear, but we are very near the tipping point. The potential to go either way is there.
The the good news is that we – the people of the earth – have the unprecedented access to the enlightenment of Love and new tools of global communication, (ranging from cell phones to the Internet and social networking,) to actually take part in writing our own script.
More and more of us are realizing that the change that needs to take place in the world around us, from our personal relationships to the actions of our nation, is exactly reflected by the change that needs to take place within ourselves.
Can you imagine that the peace, wellness and vitality we want to see in the world will emerge as we create it within? If enough of us can imagine that – and act on that – and develop the integrity to actually commit ourselves to the change we all say we want, we can definitely do it.
I can imagine it. People everywhere are feeling called to come into the present moment, release those aspects of the past that no longer serve, nurture inner wisdom and love, and awaken “the leader within.â€
We are transforming our own lives and opening to the experience of shared values and meaning. Each of us is a neuron in the emerging global brain, and our networked communities form a basis from which collective intelligence and collective wisdom emerge to create a transformed world of peace, freedom and Love.
Now is the time each of us must choose. My vision is that we choose wisely. What can love lead you to imagine?
When the hand of utter stillness opens the heart, time ceases.
Then, love is possible.