Sustainability and Spirituality
by James Smith
Discovering pathways to a sustainable future is now a major
challenge. If pathways to such a future are not found then human prospects
are bleak. It is clear that our present pathway is rapidly taking us towards
disaster. Examination of any textbook on global trends quickly confirms this
view. Global Environmental Outlook produced by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) sets out an array of staggering and rather depressing trends.
The human race faces two options. Extrapolating the current trend leads to
the first option, which at worst is extinction or at best much diminished numbers
living in an impoverished world. The second is to face the challenge of the
human race getting back on track and finding ways of developing into a better
future.
There are many reasons why the human race faces such enormous problems. Population
growth, greater material consumption and higher expectations all place a tremendous
burden on the planet and create challenges with no easy to see solutions. We
have created a god in materialism that gives no real satisfaction or purpose
to our lives.
A greater factor is however that we are in a time of change, rapid and enormous
change. We might think that this is as a result of human endeavour, but this
is not the whole picture. Just as the human race is seeking to advance and
develop so too is the universe. The universal urge is perhaps greater and this
urge washes down upon our planet. We are at the time of epoch change and a
time when the planet is now subject to new and higher universal potencies.
These new influences and potencies stem from the universal wish for development
and growth. Just as the universe is growing so too does the human need to grow
and develop, not in material ways, but in the ways of the universe. Creation
is now looking for volunteers to support its purposes.
Creation is beginning to merge with the planet. In the old epoch only exceptional
people were able to progress beyond the planet as spirit lives. Shortly everyone
faces that challenge and in our own lifetimes. In the face of this we all become
equal, none better than the other, the only issue is how we each choose to
pursue our own lives as spirits with a purpose in creation. Time passes and
the human race is behind schedule.
What we are now seeing in the world are the many and various established structures
breaking down. This is particularly true for those structures that are misaligned
to the purposes of creation. This immediately creates a challenge because in
their place new structures are needed, and these new structures need to be
aligned to the purposes of creation. This means that we need to discover the
purposes of creation and the place of the human in it. We also need to find
and discover the templates for these new structures.
Taking a forward looking approach is also important from another perspective.
Trying to solve the problems of the old epoch will not provide solutions that
will work in the new epoch. We need rather to be looking forward into the future
to work out what to do now. Therefore it requires an approach that seeks progression
and update.
In order to discover these structures human development is needed that will
release brilliance, innovation and new ideas. Science tells us that we presently
use only a small fraction of our potential. It is also clear that humans do
develop greater levels of skill and ability. This can be seen reviewing the
history trace of the human story from early cave men through to the modern
day. In the future epoch the potential for human growth and capability will
be greater.
We therefore need to find ways of developing in the arts of human science.
Finding pathways towards a sustainable future will demand great persistence
in human development. Success in the human development endeavour will yield
far reaching and beneficial results for humanity.
Finding the pathway that will lead towards a better future needs a tuning
fork that will give us guidance and reveal new insights concerning the changes
that are taking place. The human spirit has the capability to do this, but
as anyone who has been following a development journey knows, this is not easy.
A developed human leading a spiritual life will have the perception and insight
to know which direction to head in. It is such a pathway that will give the
intelligence and ideas about what will be needed in the future. The starting
point then for sustainable development is personal development.
Human growth involves personal development and indeed through time there have
been many people who have set their feet upon this path. They were the outstanding
individuals who found the music, art and science of their time. In our time
we have the double challenge of finding what will work in the new epoch as
it onsets. Those people who are able to develop will be the people who discover
the ways of the future.
There are many clues from history and we can take forward the best of what
has been. However because we are at the changeover time between two epochs
we are also searching for what will sustain into the future.
The challenge then is to find what will sustain into the future knowing that
we are at the time of epoch change and what once worked in our established
structures is now having great difficulty. This journey will involve human
development, understanding the purposes of creation and also being able to
discover what will work in the future.
Discovery presents a particular challenge and research is urgently needed
into many areas. Sustainability is about understanding the relationship between
people and the planet and when researching this, much can be accomplished by
looking at nature and understanding the principles of sustainability embedded
in nature. There are easy to see examples such as balance, interdependency,
taking only what is needed and self cleaning. This can give a starter concerning
sustainability and the wider purposes of creation. Alongside there also needs
to be a journey that looks at human potential and begins to make that real.
This is the journey that begins to develop a personal spirit life that does
not rely on any dogma or historic formula. Rather it is based on what each
person knows to be true from the evidence gathered from their own work. It
is a forward facing adventure into the unknown to discover what will work in
the future.
We are in times of great change and challenge, perhaps the greatest
that humanity has ever faced. If we continue on our present path destruction
awaits. To change path will require a great leap into the unknown of our
futures. These times are perhaps the best to be born into and certainly the
most exciting.
Sustainability Training Advice Review
We are seeking to develop new approaches to delivering sustainability training
and development programmes using facilitated processes to aid discovery and
innovation. For additional sustainability and training programmes visit our
web site: www.sustainabilityconsultants.com.
The course programmes are delivered by Eur Ing James Smith, BTech, BA, DMS,
MSc, CEng, MIMechE, MIQA, MIEMA, Principal Environmental Auditor and ISO 14001
Lead Assessor.
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