Conscious Aging with John Robinson, Ph.D.

As a prospective mystical activist, what can you add to your tool kit on climate change that would be truly helpful? Can mystical consciousness change your beliefs, perception, and even the experience of the climate crisis, in ways that would make a difference? Consider this…

 

Left-brain thinking – beliefs, expectations and values – create the "reality" we call the World of Man; it's like an action film full of drama, danger, humor, and struggle. Right-brain mystical consciousness, on the other hand, reveals the divine world here and now; it's like walking out of the theater and discovering the infinite beauty of the Creation is already here. The question I pose to you is this: Where do you want to live…in the collective illusion fostered by left-brain thinking that masquerades as waking life or in the always-present divine world of Creation here and now? You can leave the theater-of-mind at any time.

 

Left-brain thinking damages Creation with war, pollution, and exploitation. Yes, thought can be amazingly creative, but it needs to be in the service of awakening love, not for personal power or self-aggrandizement. Right-brain mystical consciousness discovers the extraordinary gift of Creation right where we are, inviting us to live in the "peace of wild things" – of stars and dirt, seasons and eras, birds and plants, smells and sounds, the ongoing three-billion-year evolution of Creation. She guides, feeds, protects, and teaches us. Nothing else like the divine Earth exists anywhere in the universe. And it's all around us when we learn how to see again. So, if you want to change the world, begin by changing your mind: bring right-bring mystical consciousness into left-brain planning. Find out who and where you really are.

 

One more thing. Mystical consciousness is divinity's gift to humanity in this climate crisis. In mystical consciousness, we cease acting selfishly, dwell again as part of Creation, and know intuitively what to do in the moment. We are home. And the steps for entering mystical realm are so simple:

 

1.     Stop Thinking.

2.     Heighten Awareness.

3.     Experience the World Exactly As It Is.

4.     Come into the Sacred Presence Through Pure Consciousness (for consciousness is Presence)

5.     Focus this Awakened Consciousness on the Being of your Own Being (which the mystics tell us is the very     substance of divinity)

6.     Let Yourself Be Moved by Love, Joy and Wonder into the Divine Flow of Creation.

 

Mystical Activism is simply mystical consciousness in action. As this state of consciousness can be learned again, work with it, experiment, and expand your sacred awareness until you get the "hang" of it, and then apply it to your life and your activism. The world looks very different in this awakened state. 

 

Divine Consciousness of Life, Earth and Cosmos, God of all names and none, holy Presence dwelling in every creature, we come to you on our knees, in guilt and shame, in sorrow and dread, admitting horrific crimes against Creation. Listening to Earth's dying cries, we acknowledge our sins of arrogance, apathy, selfishness, plunder and rape. Our "stewardship" of Creation has been a tragic joke. In failure and profound remorse, we humbly seek forgiveness and guidance - we have completely lost our way and stand to lose so much more.
 
We know you, Divine One. We share your Being and Consciousness. We are you when we cease pretending to be someone else, someone separate and superior, someone in charge. In abject surrender, in ego-shattering fear and grief, in naked helplessness, we seek the only path home: we return to you. As the fires and storms of human foolishness consume our grandiosity, we ask you to receive us, Divine One, help us return to Creation.
 
Born of Earth, we can live nowhere else. We are the latest blossom of your enchantingly beautiful, infinitely mysterious, love-drenched creativity - the 14-billion-year evolution of yourself - and our home is here. Can a fish live out of water? Can a bird fly with no air? Can humans survive the cold toxic radiation of space? Desperate plans, false solutions, more foolishness.  
 
But what can we do? Divine One, what do you need from us? Even as we ask, words burst from sacred consciousness:
 
"Be still. Be silent. Stop talking. Turn off TV and cell phone. Go outside. Open wide your eyes. I shine before you as Creation: vibrant, colorful, alive; the symphony of your life and destiny. Look intensely. Look without thought. Open your senses: seasons of Earth, power of wind, greenness of plant, wetness of rain, warmth of sun, smell of soil, abundance of life, chatter of bird and squirrel, busyness of ant and worm, darkness of night, love-making everywhere, all rising in the holiness of Creation. You don't have to figure this out because you are Creation. Let the one you were born to be take you home. Creation will heal you, then your tenderness, joy, and adoration will heal Creation."
 
May the Earth bless and keep us,
May truth lead the way,
May the ancestors see our efforts,
May peace finally stay.
 
May the heart inform our journey,
May Creation bring us home,   
May our lives be deeply planted,
And may we know we're not alone.
 
 
 

We are in the early stages of a catastrophic disturbance of Earth's equilibrium and our collective awakening must be equal to it. Such an apocalypse is always spiritual. Our challenge must be to surrender our old skins of identity, time and story – who and where we think we are - and experience instead the inner divine Self of the universe filling us with unending gifts of love, compassion, joy, spontaneity, creativity, playfulness and celebration; and the divinity of Creation freely offering her beauty, abundance, sustenance, diversity, delight, and the direct wisdom of the natural world. Divinity and Creation are calling us to act. We must move our awareness from the left-brain, narrative-driven, top-down prison of patriarchy to a right-brain love-drenched mysticism and then blend the two hemispheres in a new vision of life. We can't know what's going to happen but we can respond from love and enlightenment. And perhaps the ultimate purpose of this catastrophe may be to evolve a new human consciousness because humanity's old order has become terminally corrupt, destructive and unjust. In the unity of Self and Creation, any act pregnant with love and wonder benefits the whole of existence - we join the creative unfolding of an infinitely loving universe, trusting its consciousness to guide us to our heart's work.

The experience of Creation as sacred reality provides experiential ingredients that evoke the mystical activist in us; so, too, does the experience of the inner divine.
 
In my book, The Divine Human, I describe the transformational effects allowing the divine Self to permeate the personality. The mystical experience of Self can also be central to the making of a mystical activist. And in case you fear this process only triggers personal grandiosity, remember that the experience of Self dissolves the self-idea altogether – it's not about "you," it's about being lived by the loving consciousness pervading the universe and dwelling in the depths of your own being.
 
As the personality transforms in sacred consciousness, supernal energies flow through us, inflaming love, replacing understanding with direct perception, and instilling both kindness and courage in our activism. And while we may not immediately look different in this state, we are living into our higher self and a new kind of person, a divine being in motion. This is why our spiritual practices are so important - we become what we meditate on, and as consciousness cleanses, meditation opens to the divine and we express its nature through our own.
 
This radical metamorphosis of self has amazing consequences, uncovering a natural wellspring of ecstasy, expansive love for the world, awe and transfigured perception, inner stillness even in motion, a comprehensive grasp of ultimate issues, and the patience to "show up" each day for the work of love in whatever conditions we face. Our separateness dissolves into Presence and new creativity awakens. This inflowing divinity also energizes our intrinsic gifts for the world, as they, too, are divine in nature. For me, that means writing, teaching, explaining, and living in mystical consciousness. For you, it may stir natural talents often taken for granted or new ones you never expected. Whatever we were uniquely meant to bring into this world becomes our contribution to climate activism. We each weave a divine thread into the sacred fabric of protest, healing and renewal.
 
As described in Mystical Activism: Transforming a World in Crisis, this incarnation then moves steadily from mystic to prophet as we open the right-brain's mystical consciousness and direct connections to soul, Creation, ancestors, and other spiritual beings. This work is profound and profoundly transformational. I describe the divine human hoping to excite you, help you find this experience for yourself, and give freely of your own divine nature. Whatever your activism, may it be further awakened in divine consciousness.
 
 
 

I believe the climate crisis must bring us into the literal consciousness of divinity as Creation if we are to survive. Not the judgmental dualistic man-fashioned God of the past overseeing the fallen world, but the sacred fabric of nature herself. Experiencing the all-pervading divine consciousness of existence can heal and change us. This is the message of the mystics from across time and religion. The moment of our evolutionary leap is now. We either wake up to save - and sanctify - humanity or we tear apart all that is sacred and all that supports us. We must finally know the true nature and purpose of our lives.

 

I ask myself, how do I live this in my everyday life and as a citizen of the universe? I constantly stand at the edge of Creation, move in and out, but I deeply want to stay longer and find ways of bringing more people into the mystical consciousness of the omnipresent divine world. It's not that hard to glimpse and once glimpsed, the possibilities expand. That's what all my writing and experiential exercises have been about for the past 20 years.

When a child is in a medical crisis, parents drop everything to do whatever has to be done. They live at the hospital, change their daily routines, devote themselves to saving their world. This is now the situation in our world. Creation is the crisis. Creation is everything we are and need and value. A storm is coming of enormous proportions. We sense it growing. We feel a diffuse, unnamable fear. The darkness will affect everybody because the world as we know it is coming to an end. We are confronting a vast collective process of dying and letting go, of disintegration and transformation, a process that is so much bigger than we are. And we are the only hope. You and me and all whom we love. Hope cannot passively await some savior, politician or scientist – the kind of hope that seeks to dodge this bullet and magically make the problem go away; real hope can only come from our love of life, all life, our life. What gets you up in the morning? What would break your heart? How will you reorder your life to care for what you love most? What are you willing to give up? Business-as-usually must dissolve now into the intense divine flow of being consciousness that takes us into the sacred dimension of response. Death, and birth, and hope, and life. There is nowhere to run. It's time. What do you love most? There lies the hope.

The climate crisis is about returning to the Eden we betrayed eons ago and learning to live again in continuing awareness of the sacred world. I want to return to Eden. I want to live in the mystical consciousness of Creation. That is the road back to climate health, kindness and peace. This is not a fairy tale, it is the truest perception of the Earth we have. Yet this is a remarkable assertion. Few would believe it. But it's the mystical message of every religion and every mystic. And it is the ultimate answer to the climate crisis - all other activism follows more powerfully from it. Let us realize that this world is the divine expressing herself in form and substance and honor Creation in every thought and act.

The Earth needs to awaken as many mystical activists as possible. To survive and heal, the Earth community needs us all to become the mystically-oriented change agents. Young, old, busy, lost – we are all critical to the planet's health. Join the growing chorus of mystics singing love songs to Creation through their work.  
 
What powerful gifts does Mystical Activism offer us? Mystical Activism has the power to awaken the perception of a sacred reality (which is powerfully motivating), fill us with the energies of the divine Self (the power of love, of sacred being),provide revolutionary new tools for "solving" problems in mystical consciousness, rekindle our relationship with soul to reveal our life purpose,open a direct channel to the "other world" for additional assistance and support, and help us communicate with Creation to find out what she really needs. In Mystical Activism, we each hold the power to change the world right where we are. 
 
To be more specific, the purpose of Mystical Activism is to…
·     Combat paralysis, helplessness, cynicism and ignorance
·     Explain why we are in this Earth crisis and how we can respond to it
·     See the divine world - God as reality itself
·     Engage the fierceness of soul to support and defend life on Earth
·     Awaken the deep Self as the rising tide of divine love within
·     Discern our individual gifts and ideas for personal activism
·     Bring people together in group Mystical Activism
·     Ask for help from deceased loved ones, ancestors, spirit guides, angels, and God
·     Help dissolve the Patriarchy
·     Communicate with the mystical consciousness of Earth, trees, plants, animals, insects to discover how     Creation is feeling and what she wants
·     Respond with strength, courage and resilience to whatever conditions we must bear in these trying times
 
I hope this website, blog and forthcoming book inspire you to explore Mystical Activism and transform yourself, your work, and the world you inhabit.
 

I have always known that I am what God is, just as the world itself is divine. The mystics, too, have always known this. Existence is all one vast living breathing conscious presence filling all space, time and being. Absent the self-illusion, I experience "my" being and consciousness as God's Being and Consciousness. We are all the substance and consciousness of the divine. Everything is God (or whatever name you prefer for this all-pervading intelligence). Tragically, the idea of self causes us to feel apart from this joyous and liberating unity.
 
Driven by the illusion of an endangered separate self, we make the world ugly with competition, greed, prejudice, hatred and war, a process that inevitably damages the life in Earth. Indeed, the climate crisis is created by our own destructive mental states. But in mystical consciousness, there is no self-idea to believe, inflate or defend, allowing reality to shine through the clear lens of consciousness as Creation. So it is that we create the climate crisis and only we can fix it by waking up together.
 
Because we are one, my awakening stirs yours and your awakening stirs the awakening of others. I am you when the idea of "you" dissolves in pure consciousness, then there is only divine consciousness and it belongs to the One. Experiencing this pure loving consciousness steadily transforms our very nature. Thus mystical consciousness erases the illusion of separation and, as we realize our unity with all living and non-living things, we cease ripping Creation to pieces, recognizing that we are in reality tearing our self apart. Yes, the ego continues as a useful aspect of the personality but it no longer represents your identity or personal worth.
 
But there's more, much more. Something vast is happening in consciousness. Something immense, cosmic. The conscious cosmos is evolving. I sense it. As the self-idea loses steam, awareness opens to the transforming waves of new states. Sadly, most here on Earth are slow to recognize this expansion of human sensitivity. What is this evolution in consciousness? Where is it going? Are we awakening, spiritually evolving, or approaching extinction?  
 
Climate change has lit the fuse on a vast change in the consciousness of humanity. In this apocalyptic time, everyday life as we know it will come to an end. A new epoch is opening inside the human mind. A new beginning. But you're either on the bus or it leaves without you. This is a time of mystical transformation, not simply physical security or survival. Fight over resources and you hasten humanity's demise. It's not about personal survival, it's about awakening. This is it. So, wake up, stop projecting mental fictions on the world, and experience who and where you really are. The Earth needs your enlightenment now if humanity is to be reborn in time.
 
 

The mystic always returns to nature as the source of awakening and a deep awareness of nature in turn always makes us into mystics. The two - nature and mysticism - are profoundly related. It makes sense, then, that mysticism is now coming back into the culture's collective consciousness in this time of climate crisis and why mystical consciousness can save the world. Mystical Activism is an individual approach at first - we use the tools of Mystical Activism to understand the reasons for climate change and then transform our own response to it. We can't know how our work will turn out, but in mystical consciousness we will discover renewed energy, focus, resources and goals. And, as life is eventually a mystical revelation, it follows that The Three Secrets of Aging leads directly to Mystical Activism.