Quaker Friends speak of a state of “unity.” Mystics worldwide describe accessing and
obtaining guidance from undifferentiated consciousness as the ultimate state of bliss.
The Quaker Pathways Forward community-of-practice takes the mystery [but not the awe] out of “mystical.” We usher the mystical experience out of the esoteric closets of the few by participating together in practices which democratize the opportunity for ALL Friends who are interested in co-creating with spirit. The community-of-practice cultivates Friends’ direct, frequent, and sustained experience of the light —the undifferentiated field. “Mystical experience” is where deep contemplative practice melds with reality as a probability distribution as explained by quantum science, digital physics, and neurobiology.
Mysticism is the science of essential, undifferentiated consciousness which incorporates, yet is beyond the limitations of sense perception. Mysticism defies intellectual analysis and reasoning, emphasizing direct experience.
Mystics live in the awareness of interconnection which transcends the illusion of separation and experience the world as one field of universal, intelligent consciousness.
In community, Friends foster and hone ongoing, conscious alignment with universal intelligence lived daily, for their evolution, and that of society.
Activists attempt to move socio-political reality from point A, to an improved point B.
Physicists create models of reality.
Quantum mechanics and digital physics in particular have arrived at the same non-material understanding of reality as a probability distribution in which consciousness, not “bits” of matter, is the fundamental stuff of reality. (See Feynman’s Double Slit Experiment, and Eduardo Fradkin on quantum entanglement.)
Mystics tap into and experience a much wider swath of reality than most — including non-material reality.
Contemplatives employ the practices and tools that facilitate arrival at a broad, mystical, exerience of reality.
We are all now standing in the same space, sharing the same understanding and experience of reality. There is a confluence of wisdom and experience that activists enabled by discoveries in physics, neuroscience, and using contemplative tools, are bringing to bear on their social transformation work from a wide-angle perspective and a vantage point of unprecedented clarity.
The community-of-practice cultivates the ability to live into non-duality which is the only vantage point from which we can make any significant dent in complex multifaceted, extistential 21st challenges. It’s easier for the western mind to think about “unity” or kumbaya “oneness” than to fathom “non-duality” which calls for a more stark reckoning with non-material reality. The community-of-practice demystifies “mysticism” and builds the capacity to live into non-duality by remaining anchored in daily life while simultaneously and consciously tapped into the larger field of consciousness. We foster and hone ongoing, conscious alignment with universal intelligence for our individual and collective societal evolution. Highly potentized activism is one of myriad byproducts
Westerners are conditioned to view dualities as polar opposites: good/evil, mind/matter, rational/emotional self/other, wave/particle, spiritual/material, male/female. Mystics know these to be two sides of the same coin, two vibratory frequencies on the same spectrum. Mystics have long recognized that duality, or separation between the observer and the observed, is an illusion which Western science now demonstrates through quantum mechanics.
WHAT : Community of Practice Goals
- Personal and societal transformation: Evolve individually and as a community toward consciously becoming, generating, and transmitting Love as THE evolutionary Spark — the nature of our true selves AS consciousness.
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Contribute to the evolution of the larger consciousness system, (the field of universal intelligence, light), of which we are part by intentionally expanding our awareness beyond the personal self, to align with the universal Self.
- Serve as conduits for the infusion of universal intelligence into the apparently afflicted physical realm by learning to consistently function simultaneously in more than one dimension —or reality-frame.
WHY: Global society faces an existential crisis.
- Quakers have historically been a catalyst in American social transformation.
- It’s time for Friends to again stand in the epicenter of social transformation and model an evolutionary response to society’s multi-tiered, existential challenges.
- Global society is on an unsustainable course because the meaning we’ve collectively made of the world has been erroneously based on the illusion of separation and disconnection.
A “Great UNLEARNING” of material causality and a mechanistic worldview to enhance clarity for informed action is key.
A subset of Friends who have the capacity and willingness to tap into the DNA of Quaker contemplative practice, and leadings therefrom can guide people through the narrow straights of climate disruptions, economic upheaval and systems collapse.
- Truly sustainable and transformative social change requires clearness and perception that is grounded in direct co-creation with the undifferentiated field and is as free from cognitive distortion as possible.
- Quaker contemplative practice honed to the level of sustained still-point consciousness, (state of stillness detached from physical input) and informed by a scientific understanding of the language, architecture, and function of the mind and brain can facilitate clear, unified vision.
HOW: Community of Practice Processes
I. Deepen Contemplation/Self-Observing Practice
- Consistently and easily achieve a deep, stable, still-point consciousness —a state wherein we are keenly awake and aware yet disconnected from physical sense data input.
- Observe conditioned self and its egoic structures that generate the illusion of apparent duality and induce suffering.
- Realize our true self as consciousness rather than identify with our avatar —the physical body subject to a materialistic rule-set.
- Sustain still-point consciousness.
- Consistently, easily access and retrieve useful, clarity-enhancing information from the undifferentiated field using the still-point consciousness state of contemplation as a springboard.
II. Unlearn That Which Limits Evolution and a Full Experience of Consciousness
- Clear away limiting beliefs and reference points, cultural conditioning, emotional and cognitive distortion which obscures or inhibits clear apprehension of interconnected reality which is not objective, but is a probability distribution.
- Function as much as possible in a “core being,” true-self state rather than from the intellect.
III. Experience, Growth Through Practice, and Understanding of the Overlap of Ancient Spiritual Wisdom with Emerging Scientific Discovery:
- Neuroscience: neural plasticity, neural linguistics, cognitive restructuring.
- Quantum science yielding to digital physics — reality as a data stream which is a non-material probability distribution.
- Contemplative spiritual traditions.
WHO: (f)Friends, Activists, and Allies who are passionate about:
- Experiential rediscovery of the vast energetic nature of their true selves as one with the field of universal intelligence for longer and longer periods of time until this becomes the norm.
- Observing, calming, stilling, and mastering their mind-brains in order to experience the deeper magnetic field of love, which when applied to 21st century activism could make dent in existential challenges.
- Awakening from intellectual constructs, limitations, and drama of the egoic self.
- Retaining equanimity and not be unseated, irrespective of outer circumstances.
- Ceasing all inner resistance to all ever-changing phenomena without exception.
— “A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself!” — Neils Bohr
